I Vinil'l  IM^l'l'Vlil?l'ii  ?,fi  P.!Yf  f'SIDP  LIBRARY 


3  1210  01959  8083 


OUR   COMMON   CONSCIENCE 

ADDRESSES  DELIVERED  IN  AMERICA 

SIR  GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH 

KT.,  D.D.,  LL.D.,   I.ITT.   T).  '» 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

0¥  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


N 


OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 
SIR    GEORGE   ADAM    SMITH 


OUR 
COMMON  CONSCIENCE 


ADDRESSES  DELIVERED  IN  AMERICA 
DURING  THE  GREAT  WAR 


BY 

SIR  GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH 

Kt.,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Litt.D.  ' 

Vice-Chanceixor  and  Principal  of  the  University  of  Aberdeen 

AND  Honorary  Chaplain  in  the  Territorial 

Force  os  the  British  Aruy 


NEW  ^S^  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


1) 


Copyright,  ipig, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO 

OUR  DEAR  SONS 
WHO  FELL  FIGHTING  FOE  THE  CAUSE 

GEORGE  BUCHANAN  SMITH 

SECOND  LIEUTENANT  GORDON  HIGHLANDERS 

m  THE   BATTLE   OF   LOOS 

25   SEPTEMBER    IQIS 

AND 

ROBERT  DUNLOP  SMITH 

CAPTAIN    ^;^ED  PUNJABIS  INDIAN  ARMY 

AT  BEAUMONT'S  POST  NGAURA  RIVER  EAST  AFRICA 

12   JUNE   1917 

Thine  they  were,  and  they  have  kept  Thy  word 


INTRODUCTION 

In  the  first  of  the  following  addresses  I  have 
explained  the  origins  of  the  mission  on  which  they 
were  delivered.  That  mission  was  begun  in  New 
York  on  the  2nd  of  April,  191 8,  and  with  two 
brief  intervals  was  continued  daily  till  the  middle 
of  July,  after  which  I  had  a  few  further  engage- 
ments before  my  return  from  America  in  the  end 
of  August.  The  programme  of  the  necessary 
tours  was  drawn  up  by  the  executive  of  the  Na- 
tional Committee  (of  the  United  States)  on  the 
Churches  and  Moral  Aims  of  the  War — of  which 
Mr.  Holt  is  chairman,  and  ex-President  Taft,  the 
Hon.  Alton  B.  Parker,  and  other  representative 
Americans  are  members,  and  by  their  secretary, 
Mr.  Henry  A.  Atkinson,  to  whom,  with  his  assist- 
ant, Mr.  L.  Gordon,  and  Dr.  Frederick  Lynch  of 
the  "League  to  Enforce  Peace"  by  winning  the 
war,  I  have  many  reasons  to  be  very  grateful. 
Their  admirable  plans  were  carried  out  in  co- 
operation  with   local    committees,    chambers    of 

vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

commerce,  mercantile  clubs,  universities,  and  fed- 
erations of  ministers  of  religion,  in  the  thirty-nine 
or  so  large  cities  and  other  places  visited.  Some- 
times I  spoke  alone,  but  usually  along  with  an- 
other speaker,  an  American.  We  addressed  in  all 
127  meetings,  for  the  most  part  of  two  kinds — 
either  "Conferences"  with  business  men  or  min- 
isters or  with  both,  varying  in  size  from  80  or  100 
to  600  or  700,  at  which  after  the  speeches  ques- 
tions were  put  and  answered;  or,  in  the  evening, 
"Mass  Meetings,"  from  1000  up  to  3500  and 
4000,  to  hear  addresses  interspersed  with  patriotic 
music.  To  reach  all  these,  scattered  over  the 
States  as  they  were  from  New  York  to  San  Fran- 
cisco and  San  Diego  and  from  Detroit  to  New 
Orleans,  I  had  to  cover  over  22,000  miles  by  rail. 
The  excellence  of  the  arrangements  made  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  no  engagement  was  missed 
and  only  one  had  to  be  postponed. 

Before  delivery  I  had  written  out  only  three  of 
the  ten  addresses  given  in  this  volume.  The  other 
seven,  starting  from  a  few  notes,  grew  as  we  went 
along.  They  have  been  reproduced  from  these 
notes  and  from  shorthand  reports  of  some  of 
them,  with  the  help  of  my  daughter  who  accom- 
panied me  as  my  secretary.     Some  further  re- 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

marks  seem  necessary.  In  speaking  in  Amer- 
ica I  used  In  part  the  materials  of  addresses  given 
in  my  own  country  since  the  war  broke  out.  Again, 
the  subjects  of  the  addresses  being  closely  related, 
they  contain  not  a  few  repetitions  of  the  same 
thoughts  expressed  sometimes  in  the  same  terms. 
In  this  volume  I  have  left  these  repetitions  stand- 
ing just  as  they  were  spoken.  Again,  it  must  be 
kept  in  mind  that  my  mission  began  with  the  close 
of  America's  first  year  at  war,  at  a  time  when  in 
result  of  the  last  German  offensive  in  France  the 
fortunes  of  the  Allies — in  spite  of  British  successes 
in  Asia  and  Africa — appeared  at  as  low  an  ebb  as 
they  had  reached  at  any  point,  and  when — though 
the  American  Navy  and  Army  Medical  Corps  had 
been  at  work  with  the  British  for  several  months 
— only  the  first  considerable  detachments  of  Amer- 
ican troops  had  arrived  in  Europe.  On  those 
dark  days  there  followed  nearly  three  months  dur- 
ing which  our  anxiety  was  but  gradually  relieved, 
first  by  the  fortunate  union  of  the  Allied  Armies 
under  a  single  supreme  command,  then  by  the 
check  to  the  German  advance  in  Picardy  and 
Flanders,  and — most  potentially — by  the  increased 
speed  of  the  despatch  of  American  soldiers  to 
France  in  far  greater  numbers  than  either  our 


X  INTRODUCTION 

enemies  or  ourselves  had  deemed  possible.  Since 
these  fruitful  months  of  anxious  strain,  events, 
both  in  the  East  and  in  the  West,  have  moved  very 
rapidly  in  favour  of  the  Allies.  That  their  suf- 
ferings and  sacrifices  shall  not  be  in  vain  is  now 
becoming  as  clear  to  our  sight  as  it  has  always 
been  sure  to  our  faith.  By  the  time  these  addresses 
are  published  much  of  their  appeal  will  seem  be- 
lated. Still,  they  may  stand  as  a  record,  why  we 
Allies  went  to  war,  what  were  the  sources  of  our 
courage  under  our  unparalleled  sufferings  and 
despite  our  sense  of  our  unfitness — what  was  the 
faith  which  sustained  us  and  the  grounds  on  which 
we  pled  before  God,  to  our  own  and  each  other's 
hearts,  the  justice  of  our  Cause. 

To  His  Grace  the  Chancellor,  and  to  my  col- 
leagues, of  this  University  my  warmest  thanks  are 
here  given,  for  their  cordial  acquiescence  in  my 
mission  to  America,  and  their  generous  discharge 
of  such  additional  duties  as  fell  to  them  through 
my  absence. 

GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH. 
University  of  Aberdeen,  Scotland. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 

CHAPTER 

I  The  Moral  Aims  of  the  Allies     . 
II  Britain's  Part  in  the  War 

III  The  British  Hope  and  Its  Grounds 

IV  The  Witness  of  France 
V  Peace — False  and  True 

VI  The  Universities  and  the  War    . 
VII  Some  Religious  Effects  of  the  War 

VIII  Faith  and  Service 

IX  The  Cloud  of  Witnesses    . 
X  Courage  and  Its  Three  Sources 
Epilogue — America  at  War    . 


PAGE 

vii 

15 

43 

73 

93 

115 

135 
155 
179 

195 

209 
223 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES 


OUR 
COMMON  CONSCIENCE 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES 

Americans,  kinsmen  of  my  people  at  the  first, 
for  over  a  century  our  nearest  friends,  but  to-day 
our  Allies — at  last  our  Allies — in  the  most  sacred 
cause  to  which  nations  were  ever  called !  To  the 
ties  of  blood  which  have  bound  us  all  along  in 
spite  of  our  disruptions  there  is  now  added  the 
closer  brotherhood  of  a  common  conscience,  a 
common  duty  to  the  world,  and  a  common  sacrifice. 
The  grave  sense  of  responsibility  with  which  I 
have  come  upon  this  mission  I  have  been  encour- 
aged to  bear  by  the  generosity  of  those  who  moved 
me  to  undertake  it.  I  am  here  upon  the  invita- 
tion, conveyed  through  your  honoured  Ambas- 
sador in  London,  of  your  National  Committee  on 

IS 


16  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

the  Churches  and  the  Moral  Aims  of  the  War, 
working  in  conjunction  with  your  Government's 
Department  of  Public  Information ;  but  also  under 
the  "sanction  and  cordial  approval"  of  the  British 
Foreign  Office,  and  with  a  commendatory  letter 
from  my  own  Church,  the  United  Free  Church  of 
Scotland,  to  the  Churches  and  Christians  of  the 
United  States.  Highly  as  I  value  these  supports 
from  Church  and  State  in  my  own  country,  I  take 
my  stand  before  you  most  firmly  and  most  grate- 
fully upon  the  call  of  your  own  National  Com- 
mittee— upon  the  fact  that  I  speak  as  an  invited 
guest,  entrusted  and  commissioned  by  a  number 
of  your  representative  citizens  and  officials. 

My  commission  is  twofold:  to  relate  as  far  as 
I  can  the  efforts  of  Great  Britain  on  the  many 
fronts  of  the  war  during  now  nearly  four  years, 
and  to  expound  from  the  British  point  of  view  the 
moral  aims  common  to  the  Allies  in  their  warfare 
— those  aims  which  on  our  side  of  the  Atlantic 
have  been  clearly  defined  by  Mr.  Asquith  and 
Mr.  Balfour,  Viscount  Grey  and  Mr.  Lloyd 
George,  but  nowhere  with  greater  lucIdHiy  and 
impresslveness  than  by  your  own  President. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  without  those  moral  aims 
neither  your  people  nor  my  people  would  have 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     17 

been  at  war  to-day.  Those  alms  alone  are  the 
secret  of  the  practical  unanimity  with  which  each 
of  the  Allied  Nations  has  rallied  to  the  call  of  its 
Government,  and  of  the  security  of  the  agreement 
which  binds  them  all,  diverse  and  scattered  as  are 
their  civilisations  and  national  interests,  in  so  un- 
shaken a  resolution  to  fight  and  to  suffer  shoulder 
to  shoulder  till  their  sacred  cause  is  carried 
through  to  victory.  No  greed  for  the  territory 
of  others,  no  lust  of  dominion,  no  passion  for 
glory  has  drawn  or  could  have  drawn  so  many 
peoples  into  war  or  could  maintain  them  in  so 
costly  but  so  firm  an  alliance.  In  the  most  con- 
crete form  in  which  you  may  define  the  purposes 
for  which  we  fight,  these  are  altruistic:  the  re- 
demption of  certain  small  nations  from  the  servi- 
tude and  slaughter  to  which  they  have  been  sub- 
jected, and  for  that  end  the  overthrow  of  the 
powers  which  treacherously  invaded  their  lands, 
ruthlessly  devastated  these  and  have  deported, 
tortured  and  otherwise  abused  the  peoples  them- 
selves in  defiance  of  every  law  human  and  Divine. 
But  behind  those  concrete  objectives,  too  well 
known  that  we  should  pause  to  name  them,  are 
the  wider  aims  of  which  they  are  but  details,  aims 
on  the  scale  of  humanity  itself  and  not  to  be  stated 


18  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

in  narrower  terms  than  justice,  freedom,  and 
peace  for  the  whole  world.  For  it  is  nothing  less 
than  those  supreme  interests  of  mankind  as  a 
whole  which  have  been  assaulted  by  Germany, 
which  are  denied  by  her  avowed  philosophy  that 
might  is  right,  which  are  still  menaced  by  her 
stated  aims  and  whole  policy,  and  which  have  been 
insulted  and  wounded  at  every  stage  of  her  war- 
fare by  the  most  atrocious  cruelties  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  Hating  war,  we  Allies  are  at  war  for  no 
other  purpose  than  to  end  for  ever  such  forms  of 
war  as  Germany  has  forced  upon  the  world,  and 
to  restore  those  foundations  of  Christian  civilisa- 
tion which  have  been  shaken  and  rent  by  the  per- 
fidy and  cruelty  of  the  people  that  boasted  itself 
to  be  civilisation's  supreme  representative.  To 
borrow  the  phrase  of  a  British  statesman  during 
the  struggle  against  the  last  tyrant  who  threatened 
the  freedom  and  peace  of  the  world:  "We  are  out, 
not  to  collect  trophies  but  to  restore  the  world 
to  peaceful  habits." 

Of  all  the  Allies,  France  with  her  gifts  of  in- 
tuition and  her  closer  experience  of  Germany  is 
perhaps  the  most  impressive  witness  to  the  justice 
of  our  cause  and  the  moral  aims  of  our  warfare. 
I  reserve  her  testimony  for  another  address.     In 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     19 

this,  I  wish  to  show  how  the  conscience  of  my 
people  has  interpreted  those  aims,  how  that  con- 
science has  been  articulated,  as  the  war  has  gone 
on,  by  the  words  and  the  deeds  of  our  foes,  and 
how  we  have  felt  that  it  has  been  vindicated  by 
your  armed  adhesion  to  our  Alliance. 


The  world  knows  why  we  British,  all  reluctant 
and  unready  as  we  were,  were  forced  into  this 
war.  Germany  broke  her  word,  and  we  could 
not  break  ours.  Twice  over,  by  solemn  treaties, 
Germany,  Great  Britain,  and  other  European 
Powers  had  sworn  to  observe  the  neutrality  of 
Belgium  and  to  defend  its  integrity.  By  a  later 
engagement  at  the  Hague,  which  you  of  America 
shared,  the  civilised  nations  bound  themselves  to 
respect  in  war  the  inviolateness  of  the  territories 
of  neutral  peoples.  In  August,  19 14,  Germany 
invaded  Belgium  against  the  will  of  the  Belgian 
people,  thus  breaking  her  oath  and  by  the  mouth 
of  her  own  Chancellor  owning  her  crime  but 
pleading  "necessity"  as  her  excuse.  Her  further 
defence,  that  France  had  invaded  Belgium  first, 
was  an  afterthought  and  has  been  proved  to  be  a 


20  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

lie.  For  her  own  reputation  before  posterity  she 
had  better  have  been  contented  with  Bethmann- 
Hollweg's  unabashed  confession  that  when  she 
forced  Belgium  she  was  a  criminal  and  an  outlaw. 
It  was  this  crime,  this  breach  of  faith  by  Ger- 
many, which  united  the  British  people  behind 
their  Government  as  nothing  else  could  have  done. 
Germany's  suddenness,  the  suddenness  with  which 
all  crimes  break  from  their  guilty  preparations, 
left  us  but  a  few  days  in  which  to  make  up  our 
minds  with  regard  to  our  duty.  I  should  rather 
say  that  this  was  a  matter  only  of  hours.  I  well 
remember  that  hot  August  night  and  day  in  which 
we  restlessly  waited  for  the  decision  of  our  lead- 
ers, and  the  sigh,  or  rather  the  roar,  of  relief  that 
went  up  from  all  the  borders  of  the  United  King- 
dom when  it  was  learned  that  our  Government 
had  not  flinched  from  its  duty,  that  we  meant  to 
keep  our  word  to  Belgium  and  Europe,  and  that — 
knowing  as  we  did  that  Germany  had  been  pre- 
paring for  such  a  war  for  forty  years  and  more, 
and  that  we  were  unprepared,  at  least  by  land, 
adequately  to  meet  the  colossal  struggle  which  she 
was  forcing  on  the  world — we  would  nevertheless 
fight  her  for  justice  and  in  vindication  of  the  good 
faith  between  nations  on  which  alone  the  freedom 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     21 

and  the  peace  of  the  world  depend.  Within 
twenty-four  hours  that  immediate,  clear  conscience 
of  our  people  at  home  was  echoed  from  every  one 
of  the  free  Commonwealths  and  the  dependencies 
which  form  the  British  Empire  round  the  world. 
There  has  been  nothing  like  It  in  British  history, 
nor  I  think  in  the  history  of  any  other  nation.  We 
were  insufficiently  equipped  for  a  great  war,  we 
had  been  accepting-  the  foreign  criticism  which 
called  us  lazy,  luxurious  and  decadent,  there  was 
great  social  unrest  among  our  people  and  we  had 
just  been  on  the  verge  of  civil  war.  Yet  in  a  few 
hours  our  nation  at  home  became  united  as  never 
before,  and  we  were  immediately  joined  by  our 
fellow-citizens  across  the  seas — some  of  them  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  world  from  the  dangers 
that  menaced  our  own  coasts,  and  some  of  them, 
the  South-African  Dutch,  our  enemies  less  than 
fifteen  years  before — and  by  the  native  states  in 
Egypt  and  India  of  which  we  were  the  controlling 
power.  Such  a  result  could  not  have  been  effected 
by  anything  else  than  a  just,  a  transparently  and 
urgently  just,  cause.  Thus  from  the  beginning 
we  have  had  proof  of  the  moral  aims  of  our 
warfare. 

Such  was  our  original  conscience,  and  my  first 


22  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

message  from  my  people  to  you  Americans  Is  this. 
So  far  from  that  conscience  having  been  weakened 
by  all  which  has  happened  since,  it  is  to-day  if 
possible  even  stronger  and  certainly  far  more  ar- 
ticulate than  it  was  at  the  beginning.  War  is  a 
great  disillusioner;  there  is  none  greater.  War 
searches  the  hearts  and  tries  the  motives  of  na- 
tions as  well  as  of  individuals  as  nothing  else  can. 
War  casts  down  every  lofty  imagination,  it  dis- 
covers every  pretence,  it  bleeds  pride  pale,  stifles 
in  its  awful  waste  all  glamour  and  romance,  and 
strips  the  wings  off  Victory  herself,  which  in  so 
terrible  a  struggle  as  this  seems  to  stagger  rather 
than  to  fly  towards  her  goal.  But  I  am  here  to 
tell  you  that  in  spite  of  four  years  of  such  war, 
in  spite  of  all  the  disappointments  and  disasters 
it  has  brought  us,  in  spite  of  all  the  suffering  and 
sacrifice,  our  faith  in  the  justice  of  our  cause,  our 
sense  of  our  duty  to  fight  for  it,  our  determina- 
tion to  see  it  through  to  victory  stand  unshaken 
and  unshakable.  All  along  we  have  only  had 
one  doubt  and  that  Is  about  ourselves.  The  more 
the  sacredness  of  the  cause  committed  to  us  has 
grown  upon  our  minds,  the  more  we  have  been 
tempted  to  doubt  our  own  worthiness  to  be  Its 
instrument,  and  the  strength  of  that  doubt  is  an- 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     23 

other  proof  of  the  quality  of  the  Interests  which 
have  drawn  it  forth.  It  is  the  shadow  of  the 
great  light  which  has  never  forsaken  us,  of  the 
truth  and  purity  of  the  ideals  for  which  we  fight. 

The  materials  of  our  convictions  have  been 
supplied  by  our  enemies,  and  no  more  by  their 
crimes  than  by  their  blunders,  for  those  blunders 
have  largely  been  the  obvious,  irrepressible 
errors  of  the  criminal  mind.  Let  me  deal  with 
these  two  subjects  in  turn. 

To  the  crimes  of  Germany  in  starting  and  car- 
rying on  this  war  I  shall  call  none  but  German 
witnesses.  We  need  not  dredge  the  English  dic- 
tionary for  epithets  adequate  to  express  those 
crimes  when  in  the  German  language  itself  and 
from  German  mouths  and  pens,  speaking  or  writ- 
ing from  a  close  intimacy  with  the  designs  and 
methods  of  their  Government,  we  have  so  full  and 
so  unsparing  an  indictment. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  German  Chancel- 
lor's own  confession.  Let  me  remind  you  of  an- 
other which  before  the  war  was  five  months  old, 
was  shouted  on  your  own  doorstep  by  a  German 
journalist.  In  the  "New  York  Times"  of  6th 
December,  19 14,  Max  Harden  exhorted  the  Ger- 
man Americans  to  "cease  the  pitiful  attempts  to 


M  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

excuse  Germany's  action.  Not  as  weak-willed 
blunderers  have  we  undertaken  this  war.  We 
wanted  it  because  we  had  to  will  it  and  could  will 
it.  .  .  .  It  strikes  the  hour  of  Germany's  rising 
power."  There  you  have  it — what  other  Ger- 
mans call  and  boast  of  as  the  "unbounded  will," 
superior  to  the  moral  law  and  reckless  of  hu- 
manity. 

The  next  German  witness  is  Prince  Lichnow- 
sky,  the  Imperial  Ambassador  to  London.  The 
Memorandum  which  this  Prussian  noble,  friend 
of  the  Kaiser  and  trusted  agent  of  the  German 
Government,  has  been  forced  by  his  conscience  to 
write,  is  a  complete  vindication  of  Sir  Edward 
Grey's  honesty  and  strenuous  efforts  to  preserve 
the  peace  of  Europe.  Prince  Lichnowsky  says: 
"My  London  mission  was  wrecked  not  by  the  per- 
fidy of  the  British  but  by  the  perfidy  of  our 
policy."^  "We  encouraged  Count  Berchtold  to 
attack  Serbia  ...  we  rejected  the  British  pro- 

*  This  German  admission  is  a  complete  answer  to  the 
statement  of  Mr.  Ramsay  Macdonald:  "We  shall  find 
that  the  only  reason  from  beginning  to  end  in  it  is  that 
our  Foreign  Office  is  anti-German  and  that  the  Ad- 
miralty was  anxious  to  seize  any  opportunity  of  using  the 
Navy  in  battle-practice." 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     25 

posals  of  mediation  ...  we  deliberately  de- 
stroyed the  possibility  of  a  peaceful  settlement. 
...  In  view  of  these  indisputable  facts,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  whole  civilised  world  outside 
Germany  attributed  to  us  the  sole  guilt  for  the 
world-war."  And  then  this  man  of  the  world, 
this  diplomat,  this  member  of  a  class  not  given 
to  quoting  Scripture,  has  to  go  to  Scripture  to  find 
terms  adequate  to  his  country's  crime;  and  there, 
from  all  the  Divine  sentences  at  his  disposal,  he 
chooses  the  heaviest  of  all,  those  awful  words  in 
which  the  Judge  of  the  World  defines  the  one  un- 
pardonable sin.  "I  had  to  support  in  London  a 
policy  which  I  knew  to  be  fallacious.  I  was  paid 
out  for  it,  for  it  was  a  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost." 

Another  damning  witness  against  Germany  is 
inscribed  on  her  own  statute-book.  It  betrays  one 
of  the  basest  of  the  many  base  forms  in  which 
her  Government  prepared  for  war  by  intriguing 
against  the  unity  and  order  of  other  peoples  with 
whom  she  was  still  at  peace.  In  the  German 
Imperial  and  State  Citizen  Law  of  22  July,  19 13 
— one  year  and  a  week  before  war  broke  out — 
Section  25  deals  with  the  case  of  a  German  emi- 
grating to   another  country,   and  provides  that 


26  OUR  COMiMON  CONSCIENCE 

"citizenship  [i.e.  German  citizenship]  is  not  lost 
by  one  who  before  acquiring  foreign  citizenship 
has  secured  on  application  the  written  consent  of 
the  competent  authorities  of  his  Home  State  to 
retain  his  [German]  citizenship."  What  Is  this 
but  to  corrupt  the  decencies  of  civilisation  and  to 
sap  the  good  faith  between  nations  on  which  the 
peace  of  the  world  depends  1  We  know  that  there 
are  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  Germans, 
settled  In  your  country  and  in  mine,  who  are  too 
honest  to  take  advantage  of  a  treacherous  law  like 
that;  who  in  this  war  have  proved  as  loyal  as 
native  Britons  or  Americans  to  the  interests  of 
their  adopted  countries.  But  the  law  is  the  inven- 
tion of  the  German  Government,  and  can  have 
had  no  other  purpose  than  to  plant  in  countries, 
with  which  Germany  was  then  at  peace,  a  multi- 
tude of  persons  professing  allegiance  to  those 
realms  but  secretly  living  and  acting  In  allegiance 
to  Germany.  Allegiance  is  one  and  indivisible. 
No  man  can  serve  two  masters,  no  citizen  two 
laws.  The  same  man  can  no  more  serve  that  flag 
of  yours  and  the  Kaiser  at  the  same  time  than  he 
can  serve  God  and  Mammon. 

I  need  not  remind  you  of  the  loud  boasts  with 
which  Germany  entered  upon  this  war — boasts  of 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     27 

the  superiority  of  her  civilisation,  of  her  right  to 
impose  its  discipline  on  other  peoples,  and  of  her 
purpose  to  annex  such  territories  as  would  give 
her  ports  on  the  English  Channel  and  I  know  not 
what  else.  Nor  need  I  recall  how  at  other  times 
— particularly  when  things  were  going  against 
her — Germany  has  pretended  to  repudiate  all 
plans  of  aggression  and  conquest,  or  how  the 
Reichstag  by  a  majority  declared  against  annexa- 
tion, or  of  the  many  German  promises  to  the  Bol- 
shevik authorities  in  Russia.  Of  the  worth  of 
these  last  professions  let  her  final  treatment  of  the 
Russians,  in  cool  defiance  of  her  treaty  with  them, 
and  her  whole  conduct  in  Belgium  be  the  measure. 
Take  the  last  and  most  conceding  thing  she  has 
said  about  Belgium,  Chancellor  von  Hertling's 
assertion  that  his  Government  only  holds  Bel- 
gium as  a  "pawn"  against  the  negotiations  for 
peace.  What  criminal  impudence !  As  if  a 
burglar  who  had  broken  into  a  house  and  re- 
moved from  it  all  the  valuables  were  to  say  that 
he  only  proposed  to  hold  the  goods  till  the  police 
came  to  terms  with  him!  There  Is  a  less  stupid 
confession  in  the  "Testament"  of  the  late  General 
von  Bissing,  Military  Governor  of  Belgium, 
friend  of  the  Kaiser  and  familiar  with  the  plans 


28  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

of  the  military  party  in  Prussia.  He  has  left 
on  record  the  declaration  that  Germany  must 
never  give  up  a  square  yard  of  Belgian  territory. 
Why?  For  four  reasons.  She  needs  a  bastion 
or  bulwark  to  the  Rhenish  provinces  of  Prussia. 
She  needs  all  Belgium's  famous  mineral  resources. 
She  means  to  exploit  the  as  famous  industry  and 
skill  of  the  Belgian  workmen.  And  fourthly,  and 
here  the  matter  touches  yourselves,  she  needs  Ant- 
werp and  the  Belgian  coast  as  the  best  jumping-off 
place  for  South  America.  Von  Bissing  says  noth- 
ing of  Britain;  that  evidently  is  to  be  a  mere  bite 
on  the  way,  an  hors-d' osuvre  to  the  banquet  which 
Germany  sees  spread  across  the  Atlantic.  Noth- 
ing is  said  of  North  America,  because  even  Ger- 
man arrogance  pauses  at  an  invasion  of  your 
States.  For  you  another  fate  was  intended.  We 
British  have  wondered  why  the  German  Govern- 
ment so  wantonly  provoked  you  to  war.  Had 
they  not  already  enough  of  enemies?  Why  did 
they  go  out  of  their  way  to  strain  your  patience, 
to  insult  and  tempt  you  to  fight,  to  challenge 
your  sense  of  justice  and  humanity  by  countless 
outrages,  to  meddle  in  Mexico,  and  so  forth? 
It  all  looks  so  needless  and  so  wanton;  but  it  was 
done  with  a  purpose.     Remember,  Germany  has 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     29 

never  failed  in  her  assurance  of  winning  the  war. 
Well,  in  that  case,  who  was  to  pay  her  the  indem- 
nities on  which  she  has  set  her  heart,  who  but  your- 
selves? She  has  sucked  Belgium  like  an  orange. 
Italy  was  already  poor.  She  believed  that  she 
had  impoverished  France  (which  is  not  true) ,  an^ 
she  even  thought  that  we  British  were  getting  to 
the  bottom  of  our  deep  breeches'  pockets.  But 
there  was  your  wealth  and  the  inexhaustible  re- 
sources of  your  Continent.  So,  whether  reck- 
lessly or  deliberately,  she  counted  on  you  to  pay 
her  the  indemnities  she  confidently  intended  to 
extort.  Indemnities  forsooth !  The  costs  of  such 
a  war  as  this  are  not  to  be  indemnities  paid  by  one 
nation  to  another.  They  are  the  judgments  of 
God,  and  while  no  nation  may  escape  them  they 
are  certain  to  fall  most  heavily  on  the  criminal  that 
provoked,  and  alone  provoked,  this  wanton  war. 
There  are  many  other  German  witnesses  to  the 
same  verdict.  We  should  all  read  the  testimony 
of  at  least  one  of  them,  Herr  Stuermer,  the  Con- 
stantinople correspondent  of  a  German  paper, 
whose  experience  of  the  Eastern  policy  of  his 
Government  led  him  to  resign  not  only  his  situa- 
tion but  his  German  citizenship.  He  has  written 
a  book  "My  Four  Years  in  Constantinople,"  in 


30  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

which  he  exposes  the  crimes  of  the  German  Al- 
liance with  Turkey,  and  in  particular  clearly 
proves  the  responsibility  of  Berlin  for  the  mas- 
sacres and  deportations  of  the  Armenians.  Mr. 
Morgenthau,  your  Ambassador  to  the  Porte,  has 
told  me  that  Herr  Stuermer  is  a  reliable  man. 

But  as  I  have  said,  the  blunders  of  Germany 
have  been  as  damning  as  her  crimes,  for  they  have 
been  the  blunders  of  the  criminal  mind.  One  can 
never  be  reckless  of  the  moral  law  without  being 
reckless  of  reason  and  prudence  as  well. 

The  greatest,  the  fundamental  blunder  of  Ger- 
many, was  in  beginning  the  war  at  all.  Had  she 
been  willing  to  keep  the  peace  for  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  longer  she  might  have  obtained  everything 
which  she  hoped  to  win  in  a  war  of  a  few  months. 
Bethmann-Hollweg  confessed  this  (fortunately  for 
our  enlightenment  this  Chancellor  had  a  habit  of 
confessing)  when  at  last  he  sought  to  defend  his 
people  from  the  charge  of  willing  the  war. 
"Why,"  said  he,  "we  could  have  got,  and  were 
actually  getting,  by  peaceful  means  all  we  now 
fight  for."  That  is  very  true.  The  world  wel- 
comed the  gifts  of  German  genius  when  offered 
by  clean  and  peaceful  hands.  The  seas  were  free 
to  the  growing  commerce  of  Germany.     Under 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     31 

British  guarding  they  have  been  free  for  a  century 
to  all  but  pirates.  Our  ports  were  as  open  to 
German  ships  as  to  our  own.  To  their  hurt  other 
states  were  lenient  to  the  intrusion  of  German 
merchants  and  factories,  and,  in  the  case  of  some, 
to  German  exploitation  of  their  natural  resources. 
By  these  opportunities  and  by  her  ruthless  effi- 
ciency and  powers  of  organisation,  Germany  was 
fast  rising  towards  the  economic  domination  of 
Europe.  Again,  she  had  received  as  colonies, 
territories  five  times  as  vast  as  her  Empire  in 
Europe,  and  this  by  the  goodwill  of  other  powers 
and  without  striking  a  blow  for  them.  Again, 
one  of  the  main  highways  to  Asia  was  more  open 
to  her  than  to  any  other  Western  people;  her  in- 
fluence with  Turkey  was  supreme,  and  the  rest 
of  Europe  left  to  her  the  direction  of  the  new 
railway  across  Asia  Minor^  and  provided  her  with 
funds  to  carry  it  out.  But  her  governors  were 
blinded  by  the  criminal  passion  for  war,  and  for 
two  generations  her  people  had  been  educated  in 
the  doctrine  that  a  strong  state  grows  stronger  by 

^  Which  her  engineers  laid  down,  not  upon  lines  cal- 
culated to  develop  the  resources  of  the  country  or 
otherwise  assist  the  population,  but  on  lines  dictated 
by  purely  military  considerations. 


82  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

war,  so  war  they  chose  when  their  Interest  was 
plainly  to  keep  the  peace  for  at  least  a  time.  The 
same  German  voice  which  in  19 14  boasted  that 
Germany  needed  no  excuse  save  her  will  to  war 
now  cries:  "The  war  is  a  mistake  and  a  cruel 
misfortune."^ 

Another  line  on  which  the  blunders  of  this 
criminal  power  have  been  obvious  runs  through 
its  estimates  of  other  peoples.  The  world  gave 
Germany  some  credit,  and  she  took  more  to  her- 
self, for  psychological  expertness.  She  would 
claim  to  understand  us  better  than  we  understood 
ourselves,  and  she  certainly  took  pains  to  do  so. 
For  years  she  abused  the  hospitality  of  other 
peoples  by  scattering  through  them  battalions  of 
clever,  amiable,  patient  spies.  And  yet  with  all 
her  gifts  and  all  her  instruments  she  never  pene- 
trated the  soul  of  one  of  us.  She  believed  that 
Belgium  would  yield  to  her  insolent  demand  for 
free  passage  towards  France;  and,  for  the  first 
desperate  weeks  of  the  war,  the  small  Belgian 
army  withstood  her  hordes  with  a  valour  that 
will  shine  as  Imperishable  through  history  as  that 
of  the  Greeks  at  Thermopylae.  She  satisfied  her- 
self that  France,  distraught  by  political  and  re- 
^  Max  Harden  in  February,    19 16. 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     33 

llgious  quarrels,  was  also  dissolute  and  decadent; 
and  for  four  years  France  has  fought  her  with  a 
courage  and  a  skill  at  least  equal  to  her  own. 
Decadent!  Which  people  shall  posterity  judge 
to  have  been  the  decadents — those  who  planned 
and  who  gloated  over  the  sinking  of  the  "Lusi- 
tania,"  or  the  French,  who  never  once  allowed 
such  prolonged  "frightfulness"  as  makes  even  the 
sinking  of  the  "Lusitania"  seem  tame  to  abate 
their  courage  or  their  steadfast  will  to  overcome. 
Again,  the  German  Government  believed  that 
Great  Britain  could  not  and  would  not  fight,  and  it 
sought  to  bribe  us  by  an  insulting  proposal  that 
we  should  betray  our  friends  of  France,  that  we 
should  sacrifice  our  honour  for  a  safe  neutrality. 
Germany  measured  other  peoples  by  herself  and 
judged  them,  in  the  weakness  she  blindly  imputed 
to  them,  to  be  as  faithless  as  she  was  in  her  scorn- 
ful might.  When  we  amazed  her  by  daring  to 
fight,  she  called  our  armies  "contemptible"  and 
boasted  that  she  could  beat  them  in  a  few  weeks. 
She  knows  better  now.  She  has  said  similar  things 
about  your  army  and  will  soon  know  better  about 
them  too.  These  fatal  blunders  have  all  been  due 
to  an  excess  of  pride.  They  recall  the  judgment 
once  passed  on  a  great  but  arrogant  writer:  "A 


84  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

quality  of  self-sufficiency  so  inordinate  as  scarce 
to  be  distinguished  now  and  then  from  an  im- 
mense stupidity." 

From  the  first  the  eyes  of  Germany  have  been 
too  inflamed  by  her  passion  for  war  to  see  the 
situation  steadily  or  to  see  it  whole.  The  "mailed 
fist"  has  been  too  heavily  mailed  for  its  fingers  to 
feel  the  pulse  either  of  Europe  or  of  America. 

These,  then,  are  some  of  the  materials  with 
which  our  enemies  have  strengthened  and  articu- 
lated the  conscience  of  my  people.  The  first  duty 
which  called  us,  the  deliverance  of  Belgium,  is 
still  our  duty,  and  by  all  the  cruelties  and  extor- 
tions inflicted  on  that  land  has  become  more 
urgent  than  ever.  In  the  whole  world  outside 
Germany  and  her  confederates  there  is  not  a  man, 
however  pacifist  be  his  temper,  who  does  not  agree 
that  the  first  indispensable  condition  on  which 
Germany  may  have  peace  is  that  she  shall  sur- 
render Belgium  and  make  every  possible  repara- 
tion for  the  cruelties  she  has  inflicted  upon  its 
people.  But  Belgium  is  only  a  detail  of  the  Ger- 
man crime. The  breach  of  faith  through  which  that 
country  was  invaded  but  tore  the  mask  off  a  face, 
and  off  a  spirit  behind  the  face,  which  every  month 
we  have  had  to  confront  them  has  more  fully  dis- 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     35 

covered  to  us  to  be  implacably  hostile  to  the  moral- 
ity on  which  the  peace  and  the  progress  of  man- 
kind depend,  and  to  be  resolute  by  force  of  arms 
to  impose  on  the  world  in  the  place  of  that  moral- 
ity a  philosophy  and  discipline  fatal  to  freedom 
and  to  justice.  To  such  a  spirit  what  is  the  use 
of  talking  peace?  Whenever  the  rulers  of  Ger- 
many have  done  so,  this  has  been  without  any 
penitence  for  that  first  crime  which,  in  assaulting 
Belgium,  assaulted  the  most  sacred  interests  of 
humanity  as  a  whole.  We  know  what  they  intend 
by  the  ambiguous  terms  they  have  offered;  for 
franker  Germans,  soldiers  and  civilians  alike,  have 
told  their  people  that  the  peace  they  seek  is  to  be 
a  fuller  preparation  for  again  assailing  civilisation 
with  the  same  aims  and  the  same  temper  as  they 
have  shown  from  first  to  last  In  this  war.  How 
can  you  parley  with  such  a  foe  till  he  is  beaten  and 
knows  he  is  beaten?  He  has  boasted  that  the 
only  right  he  knows  Is  his  might;  how  can  he  be 
convinced  he  Is  wrong  till  he  learns  that  that  might 
is  useless?  He  has  openly  warned  us  that  "fright- 
fulness"  Is  the  means  by  which  he  proposes  to 
subdue  the  world;  how  can  one  meet  such  a  power 
except  in  arms?  These  are  the  questions  to  which 
our  experience  of  Germany  has  supplied  us  with 


S6  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

but  one  answer,  ready  as  we  were  to  find  at  first 
more  peaceful  solutions.  Your  own  President 
has  stated  the  issue  exactly:  "The  German  power, 
a  thing  without  conscience,  honour,  or  capacity  for 
covenanted  peace,  must  be  crushed.  Our  present 
and  immediate  task  is  to  win  the  war,  and  nothing 
shall  turn  us  aside  till  it  is  accomplished."  That 
is  what  we  have  felt  throughout  the  whole  four 
years  of  war.  That  is  where  our  conscience  and 
our  will  still  stand  to-day. 


And  now  you  Americans  have  come  in  to  con- 
firm that  conscience  and  to  reinforce  that  will. 
That  we  should  have  grudged  your  delay  was 
natural;  had  it  been  possible  for  you  to  come 
sooner  this,  of  course,  would  have  meant  a  swifter 
ending  to  the  war.  Our  regrets,  and  your  own 
regrets,  that  when  the  Germans  launched  their 
recent  offensive  your  soldiers  were  not  already  in 
France  in  millions  instead  of  in  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands were  also  natural.  But  such  considerations 
have  been  overborne  by  the  moral  results  of  your 
postponed  arrival,  and  for  these  we  are  grateful 
even  more  than  for  the  inexhaustibleness  of  the 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     37 

material  resources  which  you  have  brought  to  the 
Alliance.  The  pregnant  patience  of  your  Presi- 
dent has  had  at  least  these  two  effects.  It  has 
brought  you  in  a  united  nation — on  that  I  need 
not  linger,  for  you  know  it  better  than  we  do. 
But  it  has  also  had  a  moral  effect  on  ourselves  and 
on  the  French  which  you  cannot  feel  as  we  feel  it. 
Remember  what  I  said  of  the  suddenness  of  our 
call  to  war.  We  had  to  make  up  our  mind  and 
interpret  our  conscience  not  in  a  few  days  but 
actually  in  a  few  hours.  You  took  two  and  a  half 
years.  For  over  two  and  a  half  years  you 
patiently  bore  with  German  intrigue  and  treach- 
ery. You  treated  Germany  by  every  means  short 
of  war,  and  you  proved  the  futility  of  such  a  treat- 
ment. You  explored  and  exposed  the  German 
mind  to  its  depths.  And  after  all  that  patient 
experiment  and  experience,  you  came  deliberately 
to  the  same  conclusion  as  we  had  been  rushed  to 
— necessarily  rushed — at  the  first,  and  you  took 
your  place  in  arms  by  our  side.  That  was  the 
most  powerful  moral  vindication  which  one  people 
ever  brought  to  another  in  the  whole  range  of 
history.  I  am  here  in  the  name  of  my  people  to 
thank  you  for  it. 

But  we  feel  more  than  that.     We  know  you  to 


88  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

be  a  people  that  have  never  put  your  hearts  and 
hands  to  any  just  cause  but  you  have  seen  it 
through  to  victory.  Through  years  of  sore  and 
fluctuating  war  you  struggled  for  and  you  won 
your  Independence — won  it  against  us,  and  yet 
not  against  the  whole  of  us,  for  half  of  us  were 
with  you  all  the  time;  and  besides,  you  must 
remember  that  we  were  then  somewhat  handi- 
capped by  having  a  German  King.  Again,  through 
years  of  sore  and  fluctuating  war  you  fought  for 
and  firmly  established  your  Union.  Now  you  are 
out  once  more  to  fight  for  Freedom  and  for  Union, 
but  this  time  for  both  of  them  on  an  infinitely 
larger  scale.  Then  your  aim  was  your  own 
liberty,  now  it  is  that  of  every  nation  menaced 
by  the  most  formidable  and  obstinate  conspiracy 
against  the  natural  liberties  of  mankind.  Then 
you  fought  for  and  achieved  the  United  States  of 
America;  now  your  ultimate  aim  is  the  establish- 
ment of  the  United  States  of  the  World — such  a 
League  of  Nations,  based  upon  conscience  and 
justice,  as  shall  for  ever  render  impossible  the 
recurrence  anywhere,  or  by  any  Power,  of  the 
criminal  assault  which  Germany  has  delivered 
upon  civilisation. 


THE  MORAL  AIMS  OF  THE  ALLIES     39 

3 

I  come  to  you  from  a  people  that  through  four 
years  have  drunk  the  cup  of  the  agony  of  war  to 
the  dregs.  Week  by  week  these  years  we  have 
walked  ever  deeper  and  deeper  Into  that  Valley 
of  the  Shadow  of  Death  which  you  are  now  enter- 
ing. There  is  hardly  a  home  known  to  me — and 
here  I  speak  not  only  of  my  private  acquaintance, 
but  also  of  those  opened  to  me  as  Principal  of  a 
University  over  250  of  whose  sons  have  already 
fallen — I  say  there  is  hardly  a  home  known  to  me 
that  has  not  lost  one,  or  in  some  cases  two,  and 
even  three  sons.  My  country  of  Scotland  is  full  of 
mourning,  but  it  is  mourning  In  courage  and  with 
faith.  I  am  come  to  tell  you  that  the  countless 
sacrifices  we  have  endured  have  but  further  hal- 
lowed the  sacred  cause  entrusted  to  us.  As  you 
join  us,  you  find  us  a  people  war-weary  and  war- 
sick,  one  may  say  without  exaggeration  a  people 
bleeding  at  every  pore,  but  be  sure  that  in  spite  of 
all  we  have  suffered  and  spent,  our  conscience  is 
undlstracted,  our  faith  in  the  justice  of  our  cause 
is  undiminished,  and  that,  whatever  further  sacri- 
fices await  us,  we  are  unshakably  determined  with 
you  and  our  other  Allies  to  see  that  cause  through 
to  its  inevitable  victory. 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR 


II 

BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR 

Mr.  Chairman,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  friends, 
allies,  and  comrades  in  the  great  war! — Before 
proceeding  with  my  address,  I  must  thank  you  for 
the  heartiness  with  which  you  have  just  sung  the 
National  Anthem  of  my  people  along  with  your 
own.  These  are  the  first  times  I  have  heard 
American  audiences  do  so.  I  want  to  tell  you 
what  good  grounds  you  have  for  joining  in  that 
prayer  for  our  King  and  Queen.  They  have  both 
of  them  been  a  great  moral  asset  to  us  during  this 
war;  by  their  simple  lives,  their  courage,  and  their 
hard  and  cheerful  work  they  have  proved  true 
leaders  of  our  democracy,  setting  us  an  example 
of  service  in  loyalty  to  the  Word  of  Christ,  "Let 
him  that  is  chief  among  you  be  as  he  that  doth 
serve." 

The  subject  on  which  I  have  been  asked  to 
speak  is  no  less  than  the  part  that  my  country  has 
taken,  for  now  nearly  four  years,  in  the  present 

43 


44  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

awful  war.  That  is  a  large  subject,  and  in  the 
time  at  our  disposal  can  be  treated  only  in  outline, 
with  the  addition,  perhaps,  of  a  few  particular 
sections  of  its  contents.  I  am  not  now  to  detail 
why  we  are  in  this  war.  You  who  have  followed 
us  into  it,  with  the  same  conscience,  hardly  need 
to  be  told  that;  and  I  have  dealt  with  the  question 
in  other  addresses.  It  is  enough  to  say  that,  sud- 
denly as  the  call  came  to  us,  it  came  in  a  very  clear 
and  signal  form.  As  I  have  described  elsewhere, 
we  were  in  no  little  confusion  and  darkness.  War 
always  darkens  the  heavens,  and  this  war  espe- 
cially raised  heavy  clouds  between  the  faith  of 
many  and  the  sovereignty  of  God.  We  were 
humbled  by  the  disruption  of  Christendom.  We 
were  dismayed  by  the  apparent  failure  of  the  spir- 
itual forces  which  make  for  the  peace  of  the  world, 
by  the  rupture  of  those  mutual  ministries  of  man- 
kind on  which  the  progress  of  the  race  depends. 
We  were  haunted  by  the  sense  of  our  unprepared- 
ness  for  a  great  war,  and  we  knew  how  equipped 
and  ready  to  the  moment  were  our  powerful  ad- 
versaries. There  was  the  deeper  sense  of  our 
national  sins;  before  such  a  crisis  a  people  must 
feel  their  guilty  weakness.  But  through  it  all  our 
duty  was  clear.     Our  enemies  left  us  in  no  doubt 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         45 

of  that.  And  the  conscience  of  our  people  at 
home  and  across  the  seas  rose  to  it  like  the  con- 
science of  one  man.  We  have  had  now  nearly 
four  years  of  war,  and  there  is  nothing  during 
all  that  time  that  our  foes  have  done  or  said,  and 
nothing  that  we  have  bitterly  learned  or  suffered, 
but  has  strengthened  and  articulated  those  first 
instincts  of  our  duty  and  confirmed  our  faith  in 
the  justice  of  our  cause  and  our  resolution  to  fight 
for  it  till  the  end.  In  that  original  conscience  we 
have  waited  for  you  and  are  waiting,^  and  you  will 
find  us  determined,  at  whatever  further  cost  to 
ourselves,  not  to  yield  nor  flinch  till  you  and  we 
with  all  our  Allies  have  won  a  righteous  and  a 
stable  peace. 


Now  to  my  present  subject!  I  have  first  of 
all  to  emphasise  what  is  undoubtedly  the  greatest 
fact  of  our  warfare,  and  most  significant  of  the 
moral  forces  which  have  moved  us — what  poster- 
ity will  regard  as  the  most  wonderful  event  in  the 
history  of  modern  Europe.     It  is  this.     When  we 

^  This  was  spoken  at  the  beginning  of  my  mission, 
before  the  American  troops  had  reached  France  in  any 
great  number. 


46  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

entered  the  war  our  army  did  not  number  more 
than  a  few  hundreds  of  thousands,  of  which  about 
160,000  were  all  that  we  were  ready  to  send  to 
the  help  of  Belgium  and  France.  Yet  in  about 
two  years  that  army,  without  conscription  or  com- 
pulsion, had  grown  to  about  5,000,000.  Every 
man  was  a  volunteer.  That,  sir,  is  a  fact  un- 
precedented in  the  history  of  Europe,  and  it  could 
not  have  happened  except  under  the  influence  of  a 
great,  a  profound  moral  inspiration.  That  is  one 
of  the  many  manifestations  of  the  justice  of  our 
cause,  one  of  the  many  proofs  that,  in  forcing  war 
upon  the  world,  Germany  had  challenged  the 
moral  instincts  of  the  race. 

Some  of  us,  sir,  were  sorry  at  the  time  that 
conscription  had  at  last  to  be  enforced.  We  had 
hoped  to  see  the  whole  available  manhood  of  the 
nation  sweep  freely  into  the  ranks  of  so  sacred  a 
cause.  But  that  could  not  be,  and  at  last  we  had 
to  adopt  conscription  for  the  same  reasons  as  you 
have  more  immediately  done.  Only  I  must  add 
to  what  I  have  said  about  the  rise  of  that  mag- 
nificent volunteer  army,  the  largest  ever  raised  in 
history,  that  the  spirit  which  has  distinguished 
their  successors  who  have  come  in  under  conscrip- 
tion has  been  not  less  gallant,  not  less  willing,  and 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         47 

not  less  resolute  than  that  of  the  volunteers  them- 
selves. 

Sir,  it  is  sometimes  said  by  pacifists  on  our  side 
of  the  water — and  I  saw  an  echo  of  this  from  the 
mouth  of  one  of  your  pacifists  quoted  in  a  news- 
paper the  other  day — that  this  war,  and  the  re- 
cruiting to  which  it  has  compelled  us,  is  the  con- 
spiracy of  old  and  elderly  men,  the  effort  of  my 
own  generation  to  push  forward,  with  safety  to 
themselves,  the  youth  of  their  nation  to  bear  the 
brunt  and  the  agony.  It  has  been  asserted  that  the 
war  has  been  due  to  the  greed  and  the  blunders 
of  aged  diplomats,  and  that  its  spirit  has  been 
fostered  mainly  by  elderly  bellicose  parsons  like 
myself — a  set  of  selfish  Abrahams  driving  their 
Isaacs  to  the  altar.  I  have  seen  these  very  terms 
used  in  a  certain  journal  more  than  once.  Sir, 
that  is  a  sheer  falsehood.  I  can  say  so  from 
my  own  experience  as  a  father  and  as  Principal  of 
a  large  University.  Our  young  men,  whether 
they  went  to  war  under  our  voluntary  system  of 
enlistment  for  the  first  two  years  or  later  under 
conscription,  went  deliberately  and  with  clear 
consciences,  not  ignorant  of  the  solemn  possibili- 
ties that  lay  before  each  of  them,  but  convinced 
also   of  the   moral   issues   that   were   at   stake, 


48  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

and  resolved  at  whatever  sacrifice  to  do  their  duty 
in  carrying  those  issues  to  victory. 

If  there  were  any  regrets,  misgivings  and  with- 
holdings, these  were  not  in  the  hearts  of  our  sons 
but  in  those  of  the  parents  who  saw  them  go  forth. 
Every  war  is  a  young  men's  war,  but  this  has  been 
the  war  not  only  of  the  physical  strength  of  our 
youth,  but  of  their  conscience,  their  moral  resolu- 
tion, and  their  faith. 

Nor  has  this  temper  been  confined  to  our  youth, 
but  has  been  shared  by  the  older  men  as  well. 
Before  the  age  of  service  was  raised  I  suppose 
that  more  members  of  my  sex  than  ever  before 
in  history  perjured  themselves  with  regard  to  their 
years.  You  have  heard,  I  daresay,  of  the  French 
lady  who  celebrated  the  seventeenth  anniversary 
of  her  thirty-fifth  birthday.  Well,  there  were 
many  of  my  countrymen  who  made  a  similar  pre- 
tence, and  who  said  they  were  thirty-five  when 
they  were  forty-two  and  fifty-two  and  even  up  to 
sixty.  And  the  rest  of  us  could  only  regret  that 
we  were  not  thirty  years  younger.  In  fact,  the 
whole  of  our  population,  with  very  few  and  negli- 
gible exceptions,  were  stirred  by  the  call  to  war, 
and  united  in  the  determination  to  prosecute  it  as 
the   British  people  never   have  been   stirred   or 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         49 

united  in  their  history  before.  And  that  was  just 
because  of  the  common  conscience  which  possessed 
us.  Nothing  else  could  have  effected  so  universal 
a  result. 

Let  me  now  give  you  a  few  sections  through 
this  national  movement.  In  Scotland  we  have  a 
population  under  5,000,000.  I  am  informed  that 
out  of  that  population  over  900,000  have  already 
been  enlisted.  The  nearest  part  of  Scotland  to 
America  is,  I  think,  the  island  of  Lewis  in  the 
Outer  Hebrides.  The  population  of  that  island 
all  told  Is  some  30,000 — men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren. How  many  men  do  you  think  passed  into 
the  ranks  of  His  Majesty's  forces,  either  Into  the 
Navy  or  into  the  Army,  within  the  first  two  years 
of  the  war,  out  of  that  population  of  30,000? — 
6000  men. 

Again  take  these  facts.  When  the  war  was 
about  two  years  old  a  roll  was  drawn  up  of  the 
sons  of  ministers  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  of 
military  age,  and  it  was  found  that  no  less  than 
ninety  per  cent,  of  them  had  enlisted  or  held  com- 
missions in  the  forces.  The  ten  per  cent,  who  are 
over  may  well  be  accounted  for  by  physical  and 
other  disabilities.  Approximately  the  same  figures 
hold  good  of  ministers'  sons  in  my  own  Church, 


50  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

the  United  Free  Church  of  Scotland,  and  the  other 
Scottish  Churches.  That  is  to  say,  practically  all 
the  "sons  of  the  manse"  in  Scotland,  who  were 
available,  volunteered  for  service  with  the  colours. 
There  are  no  statistics  for  our  other  Christian 
homes,  but  if  there  were  they  would  show  similar 
results. 

Or  take  the  Universities  of  Great  Britain.^  I 
have  the  figures  for  most  of  them  up  to  the  spring 
of  19 1 7,  and  I  find  that  the  number  of  male 
students  then  left  was  in  no  case  more  than  one- 
third  of  what  it  had  been  in  the  year  before  the 
war,  that  in  most  cases  it  was  down  to  one-fourth, 
and  that  in  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  whose 
students  on  the  whole  are  a  little  older  than  those 
of  other  Universities,  some  of  the  colleges  had 
only  one-tenth  of  their  former  numbers.  Of  the 
four  Universities  of  Scotland,  taking  them  ac- 
cording to  their  seniority,  St.  Andrews  has  now 
about  800,  graduates  and  students,  on  its  Roll 
of  Service;  Glasgow  over  3200;  Aberdeen  over 
2600;  and  Edinburgh  over  5100.  Let  rnc  give 
you  some  details  of  my  own  University  oi  Aber- 
deen.    The  only  men  students  we  have  left  are 

*  See  further  Address  VI,  "The  Universities  and  the 
War." 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         51 

either  under  military  age  or  otherwise  ineligible 
for  service,  or  have  returned  from  service 
wounded,  or  are  completing  their  medical  studies. 
Their  numbers  are  about  one-fourth  of  what  they 
used  to  be.  When  conscription  came  in,  and  all 
our  students  above  eighteen  were  called  up  in 
the  middle  of  the  spring  term  of  last  year,  the 
local  recruiting  authorities  agreed  to  allow  them 
to  remain  at  their  studies  till  the  close  of  the  term, 
on  condition  that  they  would  not  then  apply  to  the 
military  tribunals  for  exemption.  I  called  them 
together  and  put  the  question  before  them,  and 
I  need  hardly  say  that  they  repudiated  the  idea  that 
any  of  them  would  claim  exemption.  They  went 
to  the  colours  as  eagerly  as  their  purely  volunteer 
predecessors  In  previous  years.  The  register  of 
our  graduates,  men  and  women,  of  all  ages  from 
twenty-one  to  eighty  and  ninety,  numbers  barely 
over  5000.  Of  these,  no  fewer  than  1759  have 
gone  on  naval  or  military  service,  while  a  large 
number  more  whom  we  have  not  yet  exactly 
counted  are  engaged  in  Government  offices  con- 
nected with  the  war,  in  munition-work,  in  research 
for  the  purposes  of  the  war,  or  in  indispensable 
medical  or  educational  service.  I  know  the  reg- 
ister well,  and  can  assure  you  that  there  are  not 


62  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

many  upon  it  of  suitable  age  who  are  not  engaged 
in  war-work  of  some  kind  or  other.  And  this  is 
even  true  of  many  above  military  age.  Among 
professional  men  our  schoolmasters  distinguished 
themselves  from  the  first  by  their  eagerness  to 
serve,  and  I  know  several  cases  where  their  wives, 
being  themselves  certificated  teachers,  have  taken 
up  the  duties  of  their  husbands  in  order  to  let 
these  off  to  the  war. 

Take  another  section  in  illustration.  The 
other  day  I  asked  the  Colonel  of  the  reserve  bat- 
talion of  a  famous  Highland  regiment  how  many 
men  his  battalion  had  supplied  since  the  beginning 
of  the  war  to  the  two  regular  battalions  of  his 
regiment.  He  replied  between  14,000  and  16,000 
men.  A  battalion,  as  you  know,  consists  of  from 
850  to  1000  men — that  is  to  say,  each  of  these 
battalions  has  had  to  be  refilled  from  seven  to 
eight  times  over.  I  believe  the  same  to  have  been 
true  of  many  other  British  regiments. 

Two  years  ago,  when  I  was  out  on  the  front 
in  the  Somme  valley,  our  motor-car  was  stopped  in 
its  place  in  the  endless  columns  of  regiments  and 
ammunition  trains  marching  up  and  down,  and  I 
got  out  upon  a  great  muddy  field  sloping  under  the 
cold  sky  and  swept  by  a  bitter  wind,  where  the 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         53 

fragments  of  a  Manchester  regiment,  one  of  the 
New  Army  raised  by  Lord  Kitchener,  was  rest- 
ing, after  some  days  on  the  front  line  of  our  ad- 
vance. I  found  them  mustered  for  the  roll-call, 
I  think  one  of  the  most  pathetic  scenes  I  have  ever 
witnessed.  The  regiment  had  gone  to  the  front 
some  days  before  between  800  and  900  strong, 
and  I  now  saw  them  mustered  in  a  total  strength 
of  256,  on  this  field  of  mud  where  their  only 
shelters  were  shallow  pits  hastily  dug  and  roofed 
with  waterproof  sheets.  When  they  broke  up  I 
spoke  to  a  group  of  four  of  them.  I  said  to  one, 
"What  were  you  before  the  war?"  He  said,  "I 
was  a  ticket-collector,  sir."  "And  what  were 
you?"  "I  was  a  conductor."  "And  what  were 
you?"  "I  was  a  lawyer's  clerk."  I  forget  what 
the  fourth  said  he  was.  But  here  were  four  ordi- 
nary civilians  who  had  never  expected  to  handle 
a  gun  in  their  lives,  and  yet  they  were  out  there 
doing  their  duty  on  the  front  of  the  war,  and 
among  its  dangers  and  privations  as  cheery  and 
as  resolute  as  could  be.  That  was  the  spirit  which 
inspired  our  volunteer  armies  from  first  to  last. 
Scenes  like  this  could  Le  multiplied  indefinitely. 

On  the  whole,  England  and  Scotland  have  sent 
to  the  war  one  man  to  every  seven  and  a  half  of 


64  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

the  population;  Wales  one  man  in  every  ten  and 
a  fifth;  Ireland  one  man  in  every  twenty-six;  and 
our  kinsmen  overseas  one  man  in  every  fifteen.^ 
In  all,  Great  Britain  and  her  Dominions  overseas 
have  raised  7,500,000  of  soldiers  for  this  war. 

This  huge  and  rapidly  raised  army  has  been 
sent  not  to  the  single  front  of  the  war  on  which 
so  far  your  American  eyes  still  rest,^  but  to  many 
fronts  all  round  the  world. 

First  of  all,  there  was  the  battle-line  through 
France  and  Flanders.  There,  with  the  French 
and  Belgian  armies,  British  troops,  on  a  line  fre- 
quently over  100  miles  in  length,  have  repelled 
sometimes  far  larger  and  better  equipped  German 
armies.  They  assisted  in  turning  them  on  the 
Marne  and  the  Aisne,  they  kept  them  from  getting 
to  the  Channel  ports.  At  and  around  Ypres 
especially,  against  enormous  odds,  they  held  their 
untrenched  lines,  sometimes  sacrificing  themselves 
almost  to  the  last  man.  And  that  long  critical 
line  they  will  continue  to  hold  till  your  soldiers  in 
their  millions  have  joined  them. 

^  These  figures  are  brought  down  to  July,  1918,  and 
have  been  supplied  by  the  British  Office  in  New  York. 

^  This  was  spoken  in  April,  but  of  course  is  no  longer 
true. 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         m 

Another  part  of  the  British  Army,  as  you  know, 
has  helped  to  stay  the  disastrous  Italian  retreat 
as  well  as  support  the  fresh  Italian  advance  on 
the  banks  of  the  Piave. 

We  have  another  large  army,  beside  a  French 
one,  defending,  on  a  long  line  above  Salonika, 
Greece  and  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  from  Ger- 
mans, Austrians,  Bulgarians,  and  Turks. 

We  have  had  another  army  garrisoning  Egypt, 
repelling  from  its  western  borders  the  attacks  of 
the  Libyan  Arabs  tempted  by  German  gold,  de- 
fending the  Suez  Canal,  and  now  advancing  slowly 
but  surely  through  Palestine.  Whatever  the  end 
of  that  campaign  may  be,  General  AUenby's 
troops,  English,  Scottish,  French,  Australian,  and 
Indian,  have  established  themselves  in  an  Impreg- 
nable position  upon  the  hill-country  of  Judea  and 
have  secured  the  coast  well  to  the  north  of  Jaffa. ^ 
There  is  every  prospect  of  the  deliverance  of  Pal- 
estine from  the  Turks,  who  have  no  right  to  it, 
either  natural  or  moral;  but  who  for  four  cen- 
turies have  wasted  its  fertility,  neglected  its  com- 

^  By  the  beginning  of  October  they  have  captured 
Damascus  and  dispersed  the  Turkish  forces  on  both 
sides  of  the  Jordan. 


56  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

mercial  and  Industrial  possibilities  and  oppressed 
its  hard-working  peasantry. 

Another  smaller  force  at  Aden  holds  back  the 
Turks  and  their  Arab  vassals  from  interfering 
with  our  water-way  to  India  down  the  Red  Sea. 
And  there  is  that  great  host  both  of  combatant 
forces  and  many  labour  battalions,  with  its  base 
in  India,  which  has  reached  Mesopotamia  by  the 
Persian  Gulf  and  has  already,  under  the  brilliant 
leadership  of  General  Maude,  taken  Bagdad,  as 
General  Allenby  has  taken  Jerusalem,  and  has  vic- 
toriously advanced  far  beyond  that  up  both  the 
Tigris  and  the  Euphrates.  But  our  Mesopota- 
mian  campaign  has  not  been  one  of  conquest  only. 
Behind  the  combatant  forces,  the  labour  bat- 
talions, recruited  in  India,  have  been  busily  at 
work;  and  the  country  has  been  organised  and  is 
being  irrigated  and  cultivated  with  the  near  pros- 
pect of  the  full  restoration  of  its  marvellous  fer- 
tility. The  Arabs,  delivered  from  that  Turkish 
neglect  and  oppression  which  has  for  so  many 
centuries  devastated  the  country,  have  been  as- 
sured of  our  good  will,  and  promised  their  inde- 
pendence and  the  secure  practice  both  of  their 
religion  and  the  immense  economic  possibilities  of 
their  wonderful  soil. 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         57 

We  have  another  army  garrisoning  India,  not 
so  much  for  the  purpose  of  controUing  the  popu- 
lations who  throughout  the  war  have  exhibited  a 
remarkable  loyalty  to  the  cause  of  the  Allies,  but 
in  order  to  repel  invasions  by  the  half-savage 
tribes  of  the  North-Western  frontier,  excited  by 
German  gold  and  equipped  with  German  muni- 
tions. Let  me  give  you  here  a  Hindu  testimony 
to  the  justice  of  our  cause.  Dr.  Sarvadhikari,  a 
Hindu  gentleman  of  the  Hindu  religion  and  vice- 
Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Calcutta,  in  ad- 
dressing Convocation  in  19 15,  spoke  as  follows: 
"Thanks  to  the  strong  arm  which  protects  us  in 
our  seats  of  learning  we  are  free  to  follow  con- 
genial pursuits.  There  is  reason  for  abundant 
gratitude  for  the  ability  and  means  to  continue  our 
work.  England  and  India  have  been  long  work- 
ing together  in  the  fields  of  peace.  They  have 
now  been  called  side  by  side  in  the  common  cause. 
It  was  Great  Britain's  singular  triumph  to  en- 
circle the  world  with  steel.  To-day  she  has 
achieved  a  greater  glory,  and  is  able  to  summon 
and  receive  prompt  and  willing  assistance  in  de- 
fence of  the  Empire  from  all  parts  of  the  globe. 
It  is  still  more  glorious  to  be  able  to  encircle  the 
world  with  a  girdle  of  united  prayer  from  all 


68  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE. 

races  and  creeds  In  the  cause  of  righteousness." 
Now  we  come  to  Africa.  In  Africa  we  have 
had  several  other  armies  at  work  since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  till,  as  you  know,  Germany  has 
lost  all  the  vast  colonies  which  she  used  to  possess 
in  that  continent.  What  are  the  troops  which 
have  been  fighting  for  us  there?  Only  some  of 
them  have  been  British.  The  rest  are  South 
African  Dutch,  our  foes  less  than  eighteen  years 
ago  In  the  Boer  War.  We  came  to  terms  with 
them,  bringing  them  Into  the  Commonwealth  of 
the  British  Empire.  We  promised  them  the  same 
freedom  which  other  parts  of  that  Commonwealth 
have  always  enjoyed.  And  we  kept  our  word. 
What  was  the  result?  The  Boers,  in  spite  of  their 
close  kinship  to  the  Germans,  have  from  the  be- 
ginning of  this  war  not  only  proved  loyal  to  the 
British  cause  In  South  Africa,  but  have  fought  the 
Germans  out  of  South-west  and  East  Africa  with 
a  skill  and  determination  equal  to  our  own.  We 
have  had  no  more  able  generals  on  our  side  than 
our  two  former  enemies.  General  Botha  and  Gen- 
eral Smuts.  General  Smuts  Is  a  member  of  the 
Inner  circle  of  our  Government,  and  there  Is  none 
of  our  Councillors  or  Statesmen  whom  all  of  us, 
whether  Irish  or  Scottish  or  English,  trust  more 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         59 

than  we  trust  himself.  Would  these  Dutch,  so 
recently  our  enemies,  have  thus  planned  and 
fought  had  they  not  realised  In  our  Empire  some- 
thing essential  to  their  freedom  and  prosperity, 
and  had  they  not  seen  in  the  German  power  and 
form  of  culture  something  that  menaced  justice 
and  freedom  all  the  world  over? 


I  have  left  little  time  to  speak  of  the  work  of 
the  British  Navy,  but  there  is  no  need  for  me  to 
instruct  an  American  audience  on  that  side  of  my 
subject.  Since  coming  to  the  United  States  I  have 
had  many  proofs  of  how  well  you  realise  the  in- 
dispensable service  rendered  by  the  Navy  and 
the  Naval  Reserves  of  Great  Britain  to  the  cause 
of  the  Allies.  With  the  assistance  of  the  smaller 
navies  of  France  and  Italy  they  have  not  only 
driven  the  German  High  Fleet  into  the  refuge  of 
its  ports,  but  have  swept  the  oceans  of  the  world 
of  German  commerce.  They  have  defended  the 
coasts  of  Great  Britain  from  invasion  by  a  foe  not 
200  miles  away.  They  have  kept  a  ceaseless 
watch  round  three  continents  and,  above  all,  ac- 
cording to  my  information,  they  have  transported 


60  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

overseas  13,000,000  men,  2,000,000  horses  and 
mules,  25,000,000  tons  of  explosives,  51,000,000 
tons  of  oil  and  fuel,  and  130,000,000  tons  of 
food  and  other  stores.  Now  for  more  than  a 
year,  in  close  and  cordial  co-operation  with  your 
fleets,  they  have  continued  their  colossal  task  and 
have  held  and  are  holding  in  check  those  piratical 
submarine  forces  on  which  Germany  has  staked 
her  conquest  of  the  world. 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  the  British 
Navy  "has  tripled  its  personnel  and  doubled  its 
fighting  armament."  You  must  add  that  to  what 
I  have  told  you  of  the  rise  of  the  British  Army. 

If  you  wish  to  read  of  what  our  mercantile  and 
fishing  marine  have  done,  both  for  our  home  seas 
and  in  waters  as  far  away  as  the  Adriatic,  in 
mine-sweeping,  in  scouting  and  patrolling,  and  in 
fighting  enemy  submarines,  get  Professor  Mac- 
Nelle  Dixon's  volume  "The  Fleets  Behind  the 
Fleet".  There  you  will  find  the  record  of  a  vig- 
ilance, endurance,  and  courage  worthy  to  be  placed 
for  its  splendour  beside  the  most  heroic  achieve- 
ments of  our  Navy  In  the  past,  and  far  exceeding 
them  both  in  the  variety  of  its  details  and  the 
wide  range  of  its  operations. 

I  know  of  what  I  speak,  for  I  have  both  visited 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         61 

the  Grand  Fleet  and  in  a  common  drifter  have 
watched  the  operations  of  mine-sweeping  and 
patrolling  among  the  stormy  seas  of  our  Scottish 
coasts.  The  courage  and  resolution  of  men  who 
before  the  war  were  peaceful  fishermen  and 
sailors  is  equal  to  those  which  I  have  described  of 
their  brothers  in  the  armies  of  Flanders  and  the 
Somme.  As  an  illustration  of  the  ceaseless  vigi- 
lance with  which  the  widest  oceans  are  still 
patrolled,  let  me  give  you  the  following  instance. 
In  coming  over  here  on  an  Atlantic  liner,  we  were 
suddenly  stopped  one  morning  at  twilight  by  a 
shot  fired  across  our  bows.  It  was  a  British 
cruiser  which,  not  content  with  interrogating  us 
by  signal,  circled  round  us  several  times  before 
letting  us  continue  our  voyage.  The  reason,  we 
were  told,  was  this.  Our  ship  used  to  carry  three 
masts  but  had  left  one  behind  in  the  port  of  our 
departure,  and  the  cruiser  had  therefore  failed  to 
recognise  her.  We  proceeded  on  our  way  with  a 
fresh  sense  of  security.  That  cruiser,  the  only 
ship  we  saw  upon  our  voyage,  coming  out  of  no- 
where, was  proof  to  us  of  the  unseen  eyes  by  which 
the  vast  waste  of  waters  is  ceaselessly  watched. 

Let  me  add  this.    I  have  seldom  been  so  thrilled 
in  my  life  as  by  the  sight  of  American  and  British 


6S  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

fleets  lying  side  by  side  in  one  of  our  Scottish 
firths. 


Those  great  forces,  of  course,  have  had  to  be 
fed,  to  be  munitioned,  and  to  be  doctored.  Speak- 
ing only  of  the  Western  front,  the  only  front  of 
which  I  have  personal  knowledge,  I  may  say  that 
I  was  in  constant  doubt  at  which  to  marvel  most 
— the  fighting-powers  of  our  army  or  the  wonder- 
ful organisation  behind  their  lines  by  which  they 
are  fed  and  otherwise  supported.  Our  troops 
there  have  the  best  of  our  beef  and  bacon,  the 
finest  of  our  wheat,  and  full  supplies  of  sugar, 
coffee,  tea,  and  other  articles.  From  the  great 
bakeries  at  the  bases  to  the  travelling  kitchens  of 
each  unit  at  the  front  the  system  works  with  a 
rigorous  efficiency.  To  effect  this,  we  have  long 
been  rationing  ourselves  at  home.  I  need  not  go 
into  detail,  but  the  following  instances  may  in- 
terest you.  Wheat  had  long  been  a  stranger  to 
our  homes  before  I  came  away.  In  my  part  of 
the  country  each  family's  weekly  supply  of  butcher 
meat  had  been  cut  down  to  half  of  what  it  used 
to  be  in  normal  times  of  peace.  In  the  first  week 
of  March  I  took  up  to  a  friend  in  a  good  position 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         63 

in  London  a  roast  of  beef  of  six  pounds  in  weight, 
the  first  that  had  crossed  his  threshold  since 
Christmas.  The  total  material  used  in  brewing 
beer  in  1914  was  1,500,000  tons;  it  has  now  been 
reduced  to  500,000.  The  strength  of  beer  has 
been  largely  reduced  and  during  19 17  no  manufac- 
ture of  spirits  for  human  consumption  has  been 
permitted.  No  unmalted  barley  is  now  in  the 
hands  of  brewers.  One  million  acres  were  added 
in  19 1 7  to  the  cultivated  area  within  Great  Brit- 
ain, and  850,000  tons  of  cereals  and  5,000,000 
tons  of  potatoes  were  produced  in  addition  to  the 
average  of  previous  years. 

Talce  next  our  munitions.  In  June,  19 15,  the 
Ministry  of  Munitions  was  formed,  and  since 
then  our  output  has  been  increased  twenty-eight 
times  over.  In  19 14  our  steel  output  was  7,000,- 
000  tons,  and  the  estimated  output  for  19 18  is 
12,000,000.  The  output  of  machine-guns  has  in- 
creased thirty-nine  times;  of  light  guns  nineteen 
times;  of  heavy  guns  seventy  times;  and  of  very 
heavy  guns  two  hundred  and  twenty.  Towards 
the  end  of  1917  about  2,000,000  men  and  700,- 
000  women  were  engaged  on  munition  work 
proper.  Besides  90  National  Arsenals  our  Gov- 
ernment now  controls  5046  factories  working  day 


64  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

and  night  on  munitions  and  supplies.  There  are 
parts  of  my  country  growing  out  of  recognition; 
here  and  there  whole  cities  of  factories  and  dwell- 
ings for  the  workers  have  arisen  since  the  war 
began.  We  are  now  expending  ammunition  each 
week  at  sixty-five  times  the  rate  of  the  expenditure 
during  the  first  ten  months  of  the  war. 

I  come  now  to  the  medical  care  of  our  armies. 
I  have  not  the  full  figures  but,  as  you  know,  the 
sanitary  and  preventive  departments  of  this  work 
have  been  so  efficient  that,  in  our  Western  armies 
at  least,  the  suffering  from  disease  is  but  a  frac- 
tion of  what  prevailed  In  previous  wars.  Armies 
used  to  be  ravaged  by  typhoid  and  by  other  epi- 
demics; in  our  vast  forces  in  the  West  the  cases 
of  these  diseases  have  been  comparatively  few. 
The  Army  Medical  Service  and  the  British  Red 
Cross  have  been  splendidly  organised.  The  trans- 
port of  the  wounded  has  been  marvellously  effi- 
cient and  rapid.  In  London  hospitals  I  have 
talked  with  men  who  have  been  comfortably 
bedded  there  before  midnight  of  the  same  day  on 
which  they  were  wounded.  In  my  own  city  of 
Aberdeen  we  have  the  most  northerly  General 
Hospital  in  the  Kingdom,  some  five  or  six  hundred 
miles  distant  from  the   Channel  ports  at  which 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         65 

the  hospital  ships  arrive  from  France.  Well- 
equipped  ambulance  trains  have  sometimes  de- 
posited in  Aberdeen  men  within  forty-eight  hours 
of  their  having  been  wounded  in  France. 

The  medical  profession  of  our  country  has 
been  mobilised  for  the  war,  and  all  its  best  ability 
and  experience  have  been  devoted  to  our  troops. 
Let  me  give  you  one  incident  which  illustrates 
this.  In  the  early  months  of  the  war  I  was  calling 
upon  the  mother  of  one  of  our  students  who  had 
been  among  the  first  to  fall.  She  was  a  widow 
with  only  one  other  son,  and  at  first  she  was  un- 
able to  do  anything  but  moan  repeatedly,  "Oh, 
why  was  it  my  laddie  that  was  taken,  oh,  why  was 
he  taken!"  After  some  time  of  this  she  suddenly 
turned  round — she  had  been  lying  with  her  back 
to  me — and  with  pride  in  her  eyes  she  said:  "But 
he  had  fower  speecialists  wi'  him  afore  he  died". 
Sir,  the  same  surgical  skill  and  devotion  have  been 
at  the  service  of  every  wounded  private  in  the 
British  Army.  The  drain  upon  our  medical  re- 
sources has  been  exhausting.  In  19 17  alone  the 
casualties  among  officers  of  the  Royal  Army  Med- 
ical Corps  have  been  very  numerous.  But  al- 
ready you  have  sent  additions  to  their  depleted 
ranks,  and  we  are  grateful  for  the  American  doc- 


66  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

tors  and  surgeons  who  are  at  work  in  our  military 
hospitals  at  home  or  attached  to  many  of  our 
units  in  the  field. 

How  are  we  paying  for  it  all?  Our  war  costs 
us  almost  £7,000,000  a  day  or  about  $35,000,000. 
That  includes  the  payment  of  troops,  the  cost  of 
their  upkeep  and  equipment,  and  the  loans  to  our 
Allies.  Before  the  war  our  national  debt  was 
£645,000,000  sterling.  By  September,  19 17,  it 
had  risen  to  £5,000,000,000,  of  which  £1,100,- 
000,000  had  been  lent  to  our  Allies  and  £160,- 
000,000  to  overseas  Dominions.  Multiply  these 
sums  by  five  and  you  will  get  their  equivalent  in 
dollars. 

We  are  meeting  this  enormous  expenditure 
partly  by  taxation  and  partly  by  war  loans.  Our 
income-tax,  including  super-tax,  will  yield,  it  is 
estimated,  during  the  coming  year  £224,000,000, 
and  the  excess  profits  tax  £180,000,000  leaving 
£208,000,000  to  be  derived  from  other  sources, 
including  indirect  taxation.  At  the  same  time 
the  prices  of  the  necessaries  of  life  have  very 
largely  increased.  I  may  say,  that  our  middle 
classes  have  to  meet  the  doubled  cost  of  living  on 
about  two-thirds  of  their  former  income. 

With  regard  to  our  war  loans,  of  which  we 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         67 

have  had  a  number,  I  have  to  say  this  first  of  all. 
Their  results  have  surprised  us  beyond  measure. 
In  each  case  the  amount  subscribed  has  been  be- 
yond what  was  asked  for  and  far  beyond  what 
was  anticipated.  I  give  you  the  following  illus- 
trations for  your  encouragement  in  similar  efforts, 
speaking  as  I  do  while  you  are  engaged  in  raising 
your  third  Liberty  Loan.  I  feel  sure  from  what 
I  have  seen  and  heard  that  your  experience  will 
be  similar  to  ours. 

Our  last  War  Loan,  raised  in  January  and 
February  of  this  year,  amounted  to  £1,000,000,- 
000  sterling,  which,  however,  included  £130,000,- 
000  of  converted  Exchequer  Bonds,  while  the  im- 
mediately preceding  loan  was  only  £616,000,000. 
For  the  latter  there  were  1,100,000  subscribers, 
but  for  that  of  this  year  the  subscribers  were 
5,289,000. 

This  loan  was  collected  in  war-Tanks  which 
had  been  at  the  front  and  were  now  sent  round  our 
principal  cities.  One  of  them  came  to  Aberdeen 
on  the  last  day  of  January.  The  population  of 
Aberdeen  is  a  little  over  160,000.  In  five  days 
that  Tank  had  collected  £2,500,000 — that  is  to 
say  $12,500,000.  Deducting  a  proportion  of  this 
as  contributed  by  the  surrounding  district,  we  may 


68  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

say  that  $10,000,000  were  contributed  by  160,000 
of  a  population.  In  Dundee,  with  a  slightly 
larger  population,  they  raised  over  £4,000,000,  or 
$20,000,000.  In  Glasgow,  with  over  1,000,000 
population,  they  raised,  also  in  five  days,  £14,- 
000,000,  or  $70,000,000.  London,  where  the 
Tanks  had  opened  their  campaign  with  somewhat 
meagre  results,  when  she  saw  what  the  provinces 
had  done,  made  another  effort,  and  in  March 
raised  no  less  than  £74,000,000.  Multiply  that 
by  five  and  you  get  the  amount  in  dollars.  And 
some  other  centres  of  population,  for  which  I 
have  not  the  figures,  did  even  better. 

All  this  has  astonished  us  by  its  proof  not  only 
of  the  amount  but  of  the  mobility  of  our  wealth. 
We  have  seen  what  we  can  do  under  the  urgency 
of  a  great  and  a  righteous  cause.  But  it  has 
caused  us  to  reflect  on  the  meagreness  of  our  giv- 
ings  in  times  past  to  the  causes,  no  less  urgent, 
of  peace.  We  see  to  our  shame  how  easy  it  would 
have  been,  had  our  consciences  been  equally 
roused,  to  give  far  larger  sums  than  we  used  to 
devote  to  education,  to  housing,  and  to  the  other 
needs  of  our  population.  I  trust  that  the  lesson 
will  abide  with  us  when  peace  comes  again,  and 
we  have  to  tackle  the  reconstruction  of  our  social 


BRITAIN'S  PART  IN  THE  WAR         69 

welfare.  But  in  the  meantime  you  and  we  have 
to  win  the  war.  The  costs  of  it  are  still  enormous. 
Take  the  sum  which  I  have  quoted  as  raised  in 
five  days  by  my  fellow-citizens  in  Aberdeen — 
£2,500,000.  That  hardly  amounts  to  the  cost  of 
eight  hours  of  the  war. 


I  have  now  to  speak  of  our  costlier  sacrifices 
in  men.  I  am  told  that  "during  the  first  sixteen 
months  of  the  war  the  casualties  totalled  550,- 
000  or  about  78  per  cent,  of  the  entire  original 
land-forces".  This  brings  us  to  the  end  of  19 15. 
In  1916,  they  were  650,000  and  in  1917,  800,000, 
"due  mainly  to  the  heavy  fighting  in  Flanders  dur- 
ing which  we  had  27,000  men  killed  in  one 
month,"  and  to  the  battles  of  Arras  and  Mes- 
sines.  "The  figures  for  the  great  battles  which 
began  on  21st  March,  19 18,  are  not  yet  available, 
but  the  total  of  British  officer  casualties  published 
in  April  alone  exceeds  10,000." 

As  I  have  said  in  a  previous  address  there  is 
hardly  a  family  in  our  land  but  has  contributed 
a  son,  a  brother,  a  husband,  or  a  father,  to  this 
awful  list.    Our  slain  number  very  many  hundreds 


70  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

of  thousands.  The  national  loss  in  the  sacrifice 
of  so  many  rich  and  promising  lives  is  immeas- 
urable. It  is  our  duty  to  see  that  it  shall  not  be  in 
vain.  We  say,  as  our  fallen  would  say  with  us, 
that  it  has  not  been  in  vain.  But  for  the  future — 
if  such  loss  lead  to  the  victory  of  right  over 
wrong;  if  it  avenge  the  banished  and  the  tortured; 
if  once  for  all  it  warn  the  world  from  the 
fatality  of  broken  faith;  if  it  not  only  preserve 
the  traditions  and  liberties  of  our  free  Empire 
but  secure  the  same  freedom  for  all  the  weaker 
nations  of  the  world;  if,  still  more,  the  example 
of  the  courage  and  willing  self-sacrifice  of  our 
youth  quicken  those  of  us  who  remain  to  unsel- 
fishness and  purity,  and  pour  down  all  the  com- 
mon ways  of  peace  the  heroism  which  war  has 
evoked,  it  will  not  be  in  vain. 

The  example  of  our  sons  and  brothers  is  upon 
us  with  a  moral  power  such  as  no  generation  in  all 
our  history  has  ever  before  felt  the  weight  of. 
When  we  are  tempted  to  lose  heart  in  the  fierce- 
ness of  the  struggle  or  the  prospect  of  the  long 
and  arduous  way  we  have  still  to  travel  to  peace, 
we  rekindle  our  flickering  courage  at  the  imperish- 
able flame  of  their  devotion. 


THE  BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS 
GROUNDS 


Ill 

THE  BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS 

We  meet  to-day  under  the  impression  of  events 
as  stupendous  as  any  that  ever  challenged  the  con- 
science and  the  mind  of  man.  We  cannot  measure 
them  nor  forecast  their  consequences.  But  it  lies 
with  us  to  see  that  they  neither  bewilder  us  nor 
distract  our  hearts  from  our  faith  and  duty  in 
a  warfare  which  is  no  less  ours  who  are  here  than 
it  is  theirs,  sons  of  both  our  peoples,  who  watch 
for  us  on  the  seas  or  who  fight  for  us  on  the  fronts 
of  the  greatest  war  of  all  time.  Their  strength 
and  their  valour  have  proved  up  till  now  in- 
domitable— indomitable  even  in  defeat;  but  their 
victory  hangs  on  the  steadiness  and  fidelity  of 
their  peoples  behind  them.  The  strain  is  uni- 
versal— if  your  people  have  not  yet  all  felt  it  they 
shall  before  many  weeks  or  months  are  past.  The 
strain  is  universal,  the  sacrifices  required  must 
be  borne  by  all,  and  the  Issue  under  God  depends 

73 


74  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

on  the  understanding,  the  courage,  and  the  reso- 
lution of  our  peoples  as  a  whole. 

What  I  propose  to  do,  in  this  my  first  discourse 
on  the  war  to  an  American  audience,^  is  to  offer 
a  summary  account  of  what  we  in  Great  Britain 
have  felt  and  have  dared  since  first  we  were  forced 
into  the  war  three  and  three-quarter  years  ago; 
what  we  felt  we  stood  for  and  stand  for  still, 
and  what  has  given  us  strength,  first  to  decide 
upon  our  duty  in  the  few  hours  when  decision  was 
open  to  us;  then  to  make  up  for  our  almost  ab- 
solute unpreparedness  for  war;  and  then  and  all 
along  to  bear  the  strain  and  the  constantly  in- 
creasing sacrifice  and  agony,  imposed  on  us  to 
an  extent  far  beyond  our  worst  fears  at  the  start 
of  it.  In  the  present  crisis  such  a  review  may  be 
of  some  use  to  you  for  two  reasons.  First,  the 
United  States  stand  to-day  to  the  war  on  pretty 
much  the  same  stage  as  that  on  which  we  found 
ourselves  during  its  first  months.  You  have  mo- 
bilised your  manhood  for  fighting,  and  are  push- 
ing to  the  front  a  relatively  small  but  a  compact, 
eager  and  valiant  army  to  the  help  of  your  Allies, 
and  particularly   of   France,   against   a   resolute 

^  Delivered  first  to  a  public  meeting  in  Union  Semi- 
nary, New  York,  on  2nd  April,  1918. 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS     75 

German  invasion  that  not  only  has  Paris  for  its 
goal,  but  seeks  nothing  short  of  the  dismember- 
ment of  France  and  the  crushing  of  her  people. 
That  was  precisely  our  position  in  August,  19 14, 
when  General  French  led  his  force  of  only  some 
160,000  men  through  Normandy  and  Flanders 
to  the  borders  of  Belgium,  and  we  had  still  before 
us  our  years  of  strain  and  costly  sacrifice.  And 
in  the  second  place,  I  hope  to  be  able  to  show  you 
by  my  survey  what  exactly  the  armed  accession  of 
America  to  our  sacred  Alliance  has  meant  to  us 
morally — has  meant  to  us  French  and  British 
peoples,  war-strained  and  war-weary  as  we  are 
and  working  and  fighting  to  the  pitch  of  our 
power  there,  years  before  you  were  able  to  join  us. 
From  the  first  the  call  to  ourselves  and  to  our 
Allies  was  clear  and  signal  like  every  call  upon 
the  conscience.  Our  duty  was  Immediate  and 
simple — to  resist  a  powerful  and  treacherous  as- 
sault upon  the  peace  and  liberties  of  the  world — 
however  unprepared  we  knew  ourselves  to  be — to 
resist  it  to  the  uttermost,  and  that  not  only  on  be- 
half of  the  outraged  people,  to  whose  security  we 
had  pledged  our  word  twice  over,  but  (as  we  in- 
stinctively felt)  in  defence  of  justice  and  of  free- 
dom all  round  the  world.     You  know  what  a 


76  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

good  conscience  we  had  in  this  matter.  Germany 
had  broken  her  word  to  Europe.  Suddenly  and 
without  excuse — for  the  assertion  that  France  in- 
tended an  invasion  of  Belgium  was  an  after- 
thought and  a  falsehood — suddenly  and  without 
excuse  the  German  Government  violated  the 
neutrality  it  had  twice  sworn  with  us  to  maintain, 
and  shattered  the  faith  on  which  the  amity  of 
nations  is  founded.  Nor  was  this  an  isolated  con- 
spiracy against  the  peace  of  the  world.  Up  to 
the  verge  of  breaking  with  our  friends  of  France 
and  Russia,  our  Government  urged  proposals  of 
arbitration  upon  the  question  of  Serbia,  which, 
accepted  by  other  powers,  Germany  alone  de- 
clined. Sir  Edward  Grey,  as  Prince  Lichnowsky 
admits,  did  everything  possible  to  maintain  peace. 
But  the  German  mind  was  determined  and  had 
long  been  determined  upon  war,  and  for  two 
frankly  avowed  reasons — that  it  thought  itself 
superior  to  the  minds  of  all  other  civilised 
peoples,  and  saw  in  war  its  chance  of  asserting 
that  superiority  and  establishing  its  domination 
over  the  world.  Why,  Germans  were  shouting 
that  in  your  own  thresholds!  Towards  the  close 
of  19 14,  a  leading  German  journalist  (Max  Har- 
den) in  the  "New  York  Times"  exhorted  his  Ger- 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS     77 

man  kinsmen  in  the  States  "to  cease  the  pitiful 
attempts  to  excuse  Germany's  action.  Not  as 
weak-willed  blunderers  have  we  undertaken  this 
war.  We  wanted  it  because  we  had  to  will  it  and 
could  will  it.  It  strikes  the  hour  of  Germany's 
rising  power."  There  you  have  it — "the  Un- 
bounded Will"  as  they  call  it  themselves,  superior 
to  the  moral  law  and  reckless  of  humanity. 

And  with  our  Allies  we  did  resist  and  break  at 
least  this  wider  menace  to  mankind.  The  claims 
of  the  culture  of  modern  Germany  to  impose 
itself  upon  the  world  by  right  of  sheer  will  and 
brute  power  as  well  as  of  boasted  worth,  were 
lowered  on  the  Marne,  on  the  Aisne  and  before 
Ypres,  by  forces  inferior  to  the  German  in  every 
material  respect,  but  endowed  with  the  super- 
natural strength  of  men  who  knew  that  they  were 
fighting  for  all  that  is  highest  and  most  precious  in 
human  life.  The  accent  of  the  enemy  began  to 
falter.  He  lessened  his  claims,  though  he  did  not 
render  them  less  fantastic.  From  the  right  to 
organise  the  world  in  her  own  spirit,  Germany  fell 
back  on  the  hegemony  of  Central  Europe  over  the 
rest  of  the  Continent;  upon  a  claim  to  a  gateway 
to  the  East  which  no  one  had  denied  her  and 
which  she  had  been  fast  winning  already  in  the 


78  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

days  of  peace;  upon  a  spurious  championship  of 
the  freedom  of  the  seas — and  at  last  from  all 
these  upon  the  cry  that  she  was  fighting,  and  from 
the  first  had  been  fighting,  only  in  self-defence. 
That  is,  they  who  had  at  the  outset  refused  to 
plead  any  excuse  for  their  war  on  mankind  except 
that  they  willed  it  because  they  had  to  will  it  and 
could  will  it,  now  deny  that  they  ever  did  so — and 
seek  to  throw  the  blame  for  war  upon  their  noto- 
riously reluctant  and  unready  opponents.  Of 
every  phase  of  this  shifting  pretence  Belgium, 
Serbia,  Poland,  Roumania,  and  now  the  conquered 
provinces  of  Russia  are  the  damning  exposure. 
On  the  other  side,  the  conscience  and  declared 
duty  of  the  Allies  have  remained  the  same.  The 
strain,  the  costs,  and  the  sacrifices  have  infinitely 
exceeded  our  worst  fears.  But  that  has  made  no 
difference  to  our  duty.  For  the  cost  of  a  duty  can 
never  affect  its  urgency;  and  among  our  faculties 
conscience  is  the  one  which  feels  a  strain  only  as  an 
added  strength.  The  promise  has  been  fulfilled, 
as  so  often  before  in  history.  To  the  bare  sense 
of  righteousness  with  which  our  nation  entered 
the  war  all  things  have  been  added — men,  re- 
sources, and  powers  of  mind  of  which  we  had  not 
dreamt  ourselves  capable.    In  France  and  on  more 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS     79 

than  one  Eastern  front  the  will  to  fight  for  fight- 
ing's sake,  or  for  tyranny,  proved  Inferior  on  the 
field  to  the  will  to  fight  in  defence  of  the  oppressed 
for  justice  and  freedom. 

For  the  moment  this  proof  may  be  obscured. 
Italy,  with  full  victory  almost  in  her  grasp,  has 
been  beaten  back  to  the  Piave;  where,  however, 
she  stands  firm.  The  fresh  German  offensive  still 
advances,  reinforced  by  the  troops  which  her 
fraud  on  Russia  has  released  for  the  Western 
front.  And  Russia  has  failed  us:  Russia  which 
up  till  a  year  ago  had  rendered  to  our  Cause  so 
many  and  so  effectual  sacrifices.  The  war  has 
let  loose  forces  of  which  in  its  first  days  few 
dreamt,  and  fewer  still  made  serious  reckoning. 
Political  movements,  slowly  gathering  in  depths 
no  war  controls,  have  burst  and  swept  across  not 
only  the  lines  of  strategy  but  the  shining  path- 
ways to  those  ideas  by  which  the  warfare  of  the 
Allies  has  been  inspired.  Our  Cause  and  our  duty 
to  it  lie  to-day  beneath  a  heavier  strain  than  we 
have  felt  since  the  winter  of  19 14.  The  end  of 
our  warfare  which  appeared  reasonably  near  has 
been  indefinitely  prolonged,  and  costs  and  sac- 
rifices are  already  upon  us  greater  even  than  those 
which  we  have  endured  during  the  past  terrible 


80  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

years.  On  what  have  we  rallied  our  minds — our 
minds  and  hearts — beneath  so  aggrav^ated  and  pro- 
longed a  test?  On,  I  believe,  three  things:  jirst, 
the  memory  that  such  trials  are  not  new  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  people,  but  that  in  God's  Providence 
our  fathers  passed  through  them,  and  even 
worse,  to  victory  over  a  tyranny  similar  to  that 
which  threatens  us;  second,  faith  in  the  undimin- 
ished righteousness  and  urgency  of  our  Cause;  and 
third,  the  example  of  those  who  have  already 
fought,  and  died,  for  it  and  for  us. 


I  take  the  memory  first  not  because  it  is  the 

most  decisive,  but  it  comes  first  chronologically. 
The  two  wars  which  our  fathers  waged  against 
Napoleon  between  1793  and  1815  (for  the 
Waterloo  campaign  was  but  the  appendix  of  the 
second) — these  two  wars  separated  by  the  incon- 
clusive peace  of  Amiens  in  1802 — present  in  their 
conditions,  and  the  trials  to  which  they  subjected 
our  people,  extraordinary  resemblances  to  the  war 
of  to-day.  We  entered  them  as  we  entered  this  in 
coalition  with  other  nations  of  Europe,  whom  also 
as  now  we  had  to  finance;  so  that  as  to-day  our 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS     81 

national  debt  went  up  by  leaps  and  bounds.  At 
first  Russia,  Prussia,  Austria,  and  Spain  were 
with  us,  but  one  by  one  they  fell  off  and  Britain 
stood  practically  alone  against  the  tyrant.  Hol- 
land fell  to  him  at  a  blow  as  Belgium  has  fallen 
to  Germany.  Lombardy  was  not  merely  threat- 
ened as  now,  but  wholly  overrun  by  the  young 
conqueror.  Though,  as  to-day,  we  had  some  vic- 
tories in  the  far  East,  we  had  been  defeated  in 
Holland;  war  fostered  by  the  intrigues  and  bribes 
of  the  enemy  was  raised  against  us  in  India;  there 
was  an  Irish  rebellion;  and  also  just  as  to-day 
there  was  sore  trouble  with  the  neutral  states,  who 
claimed  the  right  to  carry  contraband  of  war  and 
indeed  went  further  and  armed  themselves  to  en- 
force that  right.  Then,  as  now,  the  enemy  pro- 
posed peace,  really  in  order  to  find  his  breath  for 
future  conquests.  We  accepted  his  proposals. 
Everybody  knows  the  inconclusiveness  of  the 
Peace  of  Amiens  in  1802  and  how  war  broke  out 
the  following  year.  It  is  a  warning  to  us  now;  its 
terms  of  "mutual  restitution"  leaving  the  tyrant's 
powerful  will  to  war  untouched,  just  as  they  would 
leave  Germany's  if  we  were  to  listen  to  her  offers 
of  them.  Refreshed  by  the  armistice  Napoleon 
threw  off  every  disguise,  set  up  his  Empire,  un- 


82  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

made  the  republics  he  had  created,  and  menaced 
ev^ery  nationality  within  his  reach.  In  1803  Sir 
James  Mackintosh  wrote:  "Every  other  monu- 
ment of  European  liberty  has  perished.  That 
ancient  fabric  which  has  been  gradually  raised 
by  the  wisdom  and  virtue  of  our  forefathers  still 
stands;  but  it  stands  alone  and  it  stands  among 
ruins."  To  Britain,  therefore.  Napoleon  directed 
his  ambition  and  planned  her  invasion.  The  im- 
mediate response  was  the  enrolment  of  300,000 
volunteers.  By  Pitt's  care  our  people  formed  a 
new  coalition.  But  in  1807  Russia  again  failed 
us  and  made  her  peace  with  France.  Spain,  by  an 
act  of  treachery,  became  a  kingdom  of  the  French 
Empire;  Holland  was  already  another  of  the 
same.  In  1809  we  held  upon  the  Continent  only 
a  piece  of  Portugal,  and  Moore's  retreat  on  Co- 
runa,  even  though  tempered  by  his  victory  there, 
reduced  the  nation  wellnigh  to  despair.  Our 
blunders  were  many  both  abroad  and  at  home; 
and  there  were  grave  moral  defections  among  cer- 
tain classes  of  the  people  just  as  now — as  Words- 
worth notes  "rapine,  avarice,  and  expense".  But 
the  Government  and  the  nation  pressed  on,  and 
though  Austria  failed  us,  and  it  took  Wellington 
full  four  years  to  advance  from  Torres  Vedras  to 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS     83 

the  gates  of  Paris,  Napoleon  at  last  yielded  in 
1 8 14.  And  from  18 12  onwards  we  had  also  on 
our  hands  a  war  with  you  of  the  United  States. 

What  to  all  those  troubles  are  our  present  ones 
— even  the  great  danger  that  now  besets  our  Cause 
from  the  paralysis  of  Russia  and  the  defeat  of 
Italy? 

Yet  our  fathers  prevailed;  and  we  know  from 
Wordsworth — Wordsworth  who  followed  the 
fluctuations  of  the  war  with  an  incomparable 
series  of  poems — we  know  from  him  what  it  was 
that  kept  Britain,  with  all  her  faults  and  blunders, 
steadfast  to  the  victorious  end.  With  Mackin- 
tosh, whom  I  have  quoted,  he  saw,  and  the  nation 
saw,  that  earth's  best  hopes  hung  upon  the  Cause 
for  which  his  country  fought  so  long  alone;  that 
the  issue  was  "victory  or  death" — death  to  all  that 
makes  a  nation  virtuous  and  wise ;  that  the  enemy 
was 

Impatient  to  put  out  the  only  light 
Of  Liberty  that  remains  on  earth; 

^hat 

In  ourselves  our  safety  must  be  bought, 
That  by  our  own  right  hands  it  must  be  wrought, 
That  we  must  stand  unpropped  or  be  laid  low. 
O  dastard  whom  such  foretaste  doth  not  cheer! 


84  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 


Yet  even  such  courage  and  tenacity  are  helpless 
for  victory  except  they  be  the  instruments  of  a 
righteous  cause.  When  Bonaparte  a  second  time 
broke  the  peace  of  Europe  all  its  powers  joined  in 
the  declaration  that  "he  has  deprived  himself  of 
the  protection  of  the  laws,  and  made  it  evident  in 
face  of  the  universe  that  there  can  be  no  longer 
peace  or  truce  with  him.  The  Powers  declare 
that  ...  as  the  general  enemy  and  disturber 
of  the  world  he  is  abandoned  to  public  justice." 
But  such  had  been  the  instinct  of  the  British 
nation  with  or  without  Allies  all  along — all  along 
these  twenty-two  years  of  war  against  the  tyrant. 

O  joyless  power  that  stands  by  lawless  force 

And  if  old  judgments  keep  their  sacred  course, 
Him  from  that  height  shall  heaven  precipitate. 

I  need  not  draw  the  moral  for  ourselves,  in  ad- 
versities less  severe,  with  Allies  more  assured, 
and  with  a  Cause,  if  possible,  still  more  just  and 
sacred. 

To  the  proclamation  of  Napoleon's  outlawry 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS     85 

your  own  President's  words  regarding  Germany 
offer  a  close  parallel: — 

"The  German  power,  a  thing  without  con- 
science, honour,  or  capacity  for  covenanted  peace, 
must  be  crushed.  .  .  .  Our  present  and  imme- 
diate task  is  to  win  the  war  and  nothing  shall  turn 
us  aside  until  it  is  accomplished." 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  things  that  have 
been  added  to  our  Cause  in  proportion  to  our 
belief  in  it,  and  to  the  works  by  which  we  have 
shown  our  faith:  our  vast  armies,  mountains  of 
munitions,  and  other  fresh  resources,  a  new  ex- 
perience of  the  extent  and  mobility  of  our  wealth, 
the  discovery  of  unexpected  capacities  of  organisa- 
tion, of  devotion,  of  endurance.  But  above  all  you 
have  joined  us,  not  only  with  your  boundless  re- 
sources of  material  and  energy;  but  with  your 
national  record  of  never  having  put  your  minds 
and  hearts  to  any  just  cause  but  you  have  carried 
it  to  victory;  and  with  this  further  moral  rein- 
forcement of  our  conscience  and  will  that  after 
two  and  a  half  years  of  deliberation,  and  of  ex- 
perimenting with  the  enemy  by  every  possible 
means  of  peace,  you  came  to  that  same  conclusion 
to  which  we  had  to  rise  in  a  few  hours,  when  the 
war  was  rushed  on  us — that  Germany  must  be 


86  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

fought  out  on  the  field  if  the  freedom  and  peace  of 
the  world  are  to  be  rendered  secure.  What  a  vin- 
dication you  have  given  us  of  our  original  in- 
stincts of  duty!^  What  a  remedy  for  the  moral 
distractions  of  these  years  of  fluctuating  war! 
What  a  full  compensation  for  the  collapse  of  our 
most  potential  Ally!  What  a  buttress  against  the 
threatened  fall  of  the  Italian  front  and  ours,  and 
the  French  retreat  before  the  new  German  offen- 
sive I  Subtract  Russia  as  we  must — and  even  Italy 
if  your  fears  compel  you  to  do  so,  though  I  think 
they  are  unfounded,  for  Italy  now  stands  and  is 
certain  to  advance  again — you  still  have  these 
three,  France,  Britain,  and  America :  surely  an  in- 
domitable alliance  both  in  battle  and  in  the  coun- 
sels that  shall  after  this  establish  for  the  world  a 
free,  a  just,  and  a  lasting  peace. 

Yet  whatever  be  our  Allies  and  our  resources, 
to  us  British  it  is  the  Cause  that  matters;  and  we 
feel  that  it  shall  be  woe  to  us  if  either  by  a  negli- 
gent war  or  by  a  timid  and  selfish  peace  we  im- 
peril the  interests  of  that  Cause  and  the  future  of 
the  world  that  hangs  upon  it.  Whether  we  look 
at  that  Cause  or  the  material  resources  it  has 
evoked  by  the  sheer  strength  of  its  justice,  we  have 
*  See  above,  Address  I. 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS      87 

no  reason,  even  to-day,  for  aught  but  faith  In  God, 
courage  and  a  confident  hope — 

Hope  the  paramount  duty  that  Heaven  lays, 
For  its  own  honour,  on  man's  suffering  heart. 


I  have  left  but  little  time  to  speak  of  the  third 
of  the  strong  things  on  which  in  these  dark  days 
we  British  have  rallied  our  hearts:  the  example 
of  those  who  for  us  and  for  our  Cause  have  fought 
and  died.  But  indeed,  except  for  our  vows,  words 
are  not  needed  where  deeds  have  been  so  sacra- 
mental. Righteous  in  itself,  our  Cause  and  the 
hopes  it  has  gathered  have  been  further  hallowed 
by  the  volume  of  sacrifice  they  have  evoked.  Our 
hearts  feel  the  steadying  and  the  cleansing  power 
of  these  examples.  Our  young  men  who  have 
fallen  gave  their  lives  when  still  out  of  sight  of 
victory,  and  cheered  by  nought  beyond  their  sense 
of  duty  and  devotion  to  a  high  ideal.  But  they 
did  so — for  the  most  part  in  conditions  neither  of 
glory  nor  even  of  promise — because  sustained  by 
the  assurance  that  they  fought  and  died  not  for 
the  moment  nor  for  themselves,  perhaps  not  even 
for  their  own  generation,  but  for  the  future — a 


88  OUR  COIVIMON  CONSCIENCE 

far  off,  but,  as  God  reigns,  a  certain  and  a  blessed 
future  for  the  world.  They  were  willing  and 
cheerfully  willing  that  it  should  be  so.  They  have 
left  their  warfare  unfinished,  have  left  it  to  us  in 
the  confidence  that  we  shall  see  it  through,  and 
win  for  humanity  the  fulfilment  of  the  ideals  for 
which  they  have  died.  We  are  ready  to  carry  on 
in  their  spirit,  and  if  it  must  be  that  we  see  neither 
victory  nor  peace  for  ourselves,  to  secure  these  by 
our  patience  and  sacrifice  for  the  generations  to 
come — to  fight  till  the  will  to  war  is  broken  and 
consents  to  disarmament  and  the  restoration  of 
freedom.  No  other  end  is  worth  struggling  for: 
we  dare  no  other  with  these  examples  behind  and 
about  us.  I  leave  you  with  the  words  of  one  who 
not  only  expressed  this  spirit  with  a  rare  direct- 
ness, but  fought  in  it  and  laid  down  his  own  life 
for  it  soon  after  he  had  written  them — Robert 
Vernede : — 

If  through  this  roar  o'  the  guns  one  prayer  may  reach 
Thee, 

Lord  of  all  life,  whose  mercies  never  sleep, 
Not  in  our  time,  not  now,  Lord,  we  beseech  Thee 

To  grant  us  peace.     The  sword  has  bit  too  deep. 

We  see  all  fair  things  fouled — homes  love's  hands  builded 
Shattered  to  dust  beside  their  withered  vines, 


BRITISH  HOPE  AND  ITS  GROUNDS      89 

Shattered  the  towers  that  once  Thy  sunsets  gilded, 
And  Christ  struck  yet  again  within  His  shrines. 

Hark  the  roar  grows  .  .  .  the  thunders  reawaken — 
We  ask  one  thing,  Lord,  only  one  thing  now: 

Hearts  high  as  theirs,  who  went  to  death  unshaken, 
Courage  like  theirs  to  make  and  keep  their  vow. 

Then  to  our  children  there  shall  be  no  handing 
Of  fates  so  vain — of  passions  so  abhorr'd  .  .  . 

But   Peace  .  .  .  the   Peace   which   passeth   understand- 
ing ..  . 
Not  in  our  time  .  .  .  but  in  their  time,  O  Lord. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE 


IVi 

THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE 

Americans,  the  conscience  which  we  share  in 
this  war  is  not  ours  alone.  It  is  France's  and 
Italy's  and  Belgium's  and  that  of  all  our  Allies. 
There  never  was  an  Alliance  so  closely  bound  by 
a  common  conscience.  In  this  address  I  wish  to 
speak  of  France's  witness  to  the  character  of  our 
aims.  It  is  one  of  the  most  vivid  of  all  the  allied 
testimonies  to  the  justice  of  our  Cause.  With  that 
power  of  intuition  in  which  they  excel,  the  French 
though  sorely  divided  as  a  people,  sprang  from 
the  first  to  the  moral  issues  of  the  war  with  a  unan- 
imity that  surprised  themselves  and  the  world. 
And  French  being,  as  one  has  said,  "the  language 
in  which  thought  rises  most  easily  to  the  surface,"^ 
they  have  expressed  their  convictions  with  a  clarity 
and  fulness  beyond  the  rest  of  us.  In  its  individ- 
ual forms,  as  when  speaking  of  faith  and  God 
^  R.  W.  Barbour. 
93 


94  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

and  the  other  life,  the  French  testimony  fre- 
quently contrasts  with  the  greater  reticence  of  our 
own  soldiers.  We  understand  and  respect  the 
latter,  but  we  turn  to  those  spiritual  confidences 
of  French  fighters  as  to  a  day  of  southern  sunshine. 
Remember  too,  that  as  France,  of  all  the  greater 
Allies,  has  suffered  most  from  the  war,  her  moral 
witness  is  the  more  appealing. 

We  shall  best  approach  our  subject  by  recalling 
the  state  of  the  French  people  before  war  broke 
out.  It  Is  not  extravagant  to  say  that  of  all  civil- 
ised peoples  this  was  then  the  most  divided,  fis- 
sured, and  rent. 

There  was  first,  the  widest  and  bitterest  of  all 
schisms,  the  religious,  which  has  been  firmly  set, 
though  not  started,  by  the  Revolution.  In  no 
country  has  the  opposition  to  religion,  the  pro- 
fession of  sheer  atheism,  been  more  resolute,  out- 
spoken, or  aggressive.  The  conflict  had  again 
come  to  a  head,  some  few  years  ago,  over  the 
divorce  of  the  Church  by  the  State.  With  the 
principle  of  that  divorce  many  in  my  country,  and 
(I  suppose)  all  In  yours  would  sympathise.  But 
it  was  largely  Inspired  by  hostility  to  religion  as 
well  as  to  the  Church,  and  It  was  carried  out  with 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  95 

heavy  exactions  and  deprivations.  The  bitterness 
became  intense,  and  the  parties  appeared  to  be  ir- 
reconcilable. 

Then  there  were  the  political  divisions,  some  of 
them  crossing  the  religious.  In  the  domestic 
politics  of  France  more  groups  and  factions  ex- 
isted than  perhaps  in  any  other  civilised  commu- 
nity. You  remember  with  what  bewildering  rapid- 
ity they  overturned  and  succeeded  each  other  in 
the  Government  of  the  country.  M.  Paul  Saba- 
tier  has  described  the  "extreme  mutual  animosity 
of  the  various  political  parties."  "Political  pas- 
sions were  raised  to  such  a  pitch  that  the  very 
foundations  of  the  moral  unity  of  the  country 
seemed  to  be  shattered  thereby.  'Do  you  always 
devour  one  another  in  France?'  I  was  asked  not 
very  long  before  the  war,  by  a  German  diplo- 
matist. ...  It  was  only  too  true — ^the  French 
were  devouring  one  another."  * 

[Another  Frenchman  has  said  that  "Catholics, 
Protestants,  Jews,  Free-thinkers,  Trade-Union- 
Ists,  Internationalists,  Traditionalists,  were  moved 

*  "A  Frenchman's  Thoughts  on  the  War,"  translated 
by  Bernard  Miall.  London:  T.  Fisher  Unwin  Ltd., 
1915. 


96  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

by  forces  which  drove  us  at  each  other's 
throats".!] 

But  now  there  Is  no  people  more  united  than 
are  the  French.  They  present  to  us  all  the  ex- 
ample of  unity — of  ungrudging  comradeship 
among  all  sects  and  parties  in  devotion  to  a  com- 
mon aim — an  example  which  is  one  of  the  sharp- 
est edges  on  the  solidity  of  our  great  Alliance. 

How  has  this  wonderful  change  come  about? 
Certainly  not  by  the  mere  physical  pressure  of 
self-defence,  nor  mainly  by  a  community  of  suf- 
fering. These  indeed  have  been  so  terrible  that 
they  might  have  been  deemed  sufficient  to  ac- 
count for  the  effect  on  the  national  temper.  When 
we  British  go  to  France  we  become  silent  about 
our  own  sacrifices.  We  have  not  seen  one  of  our 
richest  provinces  pass  into  the  hands  of  the 
enemy.  We  have  not  had  our  minerals  and  our 
industries    ruthlessly    exploited,    nor    our    towns 

^  Maurice  Barres,  "The  Faith  of  France."  I  did  not 
read  this  volume  till  I  was  returning  from  America.  I 
have  entered  a  few  quotations,  which  I  make  from  it 
in  this  address,  in  square  brackets.  They  are  taken  from 
the  translation  by  Elizabeth  Marbury,  with  introduc- 
tion by  Dr.  Henry  Van  Dyke.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co., 
1918. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  97 

ruined,  nor  many  of  our  villages  erased  and  their 
rich  fields  tortured  and  poisoned  or  turned  into 
vast  cemeteries.  We  have  not  had  great  sections 
of  our  population  deported  to  till  the  enemy's 
lands,  nor  our  women  and  children  enslaved  nor 
— in  the  same  awful  number  at  least — murdered 
by  his  policy  of  "frightfulness."  But  from  all 
these  agonies  France  has  suffered  for  four  years. 
Yet  the  French  will  tell  you — and  this  is  true — 
that  it  is  not  the  fires  of  that  material  furnace 
which  have  fused  them  into  one — which  have 
tempered  the  steel  front  they  present  to  the  foe. 
They  are  now  compact  and  sympathetic,  not  by 
the  necessity  of  fighting  for  their  national  exist- 
ence, but  by  the  conscience  which,  to  judge  from 
countless  declarations  by  their  soldiers  and  from 
their  hterature  on  the  war,  all  parties  feel  in  them- 
selves and  recognise  in  each  other:  the  conscience 
of  the  moral  character  of  the  struggle  forced  upon 
them.  A  community  of  spirit  has  descended  on  this 
sorely  divided  people,  and  the  spirit  is  something 
greater  than  the  spirit  of  patriotism.  Factions  and 
sects  have  forgotten  themselves  not  merely  in  the 
larger  self  of  France,  but — as  I  shall  quote  to  you 
from  their  own  words — in  a  France  which  is  fight- 
ing for  humanity  and  a  new  world,  against  a  power 


98  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

absolutely  hostile  to  those  spiritual  ideals  that  are 
mankind's  highest  interests.  It  Is  striking  how  the 
word  glory,  which  the  world  indentified  with 
France,  has  been  replaced  in  her  books  and  in  the 
letters  of  her  soldiers  by  the  words  duty  and  sac- 
rifice. You  Americans  remember  the  idealism 
and  disinterestedness  of  those  first  French  who  in 
the  days  before  Napoleon  came  to  fight  for  your 
freedom.  The  French  of  to-day  are  showing  the 
same  idealism  and  disinterestedness,  but  on  a 
larger  scale  and  under  a  far  more  terrible  test. 

The  testimonies  to  this  spiritual  devotion  that 
I  shall  quote  I  take  mainly  from  two  books  which 
the  war  has  brought  forth  in  France.  One  gives 
us  the  witness  of  her  intellectuals,  men  for  the 
most  part  of  no  religious  confession,  some  of 
whom  before  the  war  abjured  religion  altogether; 
and  the  other  the  witness  of  French  Catholics. 
And  I  shall  add  to  these  the  testimony  of  some 
French  Protestants. 

In  "L'Universite  et  la  Guerre,"^  M.  Thamin, 
Rector  of  the  Academy  of  Bordeaux,  quoting 
from  the  letters  of  many  schoolmasters  and  other 
graduates  engaged  on  the  Front,  gives  us  not  only 
the  testimony  of  intelligent  and  educated  men,  who 
*  Paris:  Hachette  et  Cie,    1916. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  99 

had  previously  been  indifferent  or  hostile  to  re- 
ligion, to  the  spiritual  ideals  which  now  inspired 
them,  and  the  religious  spirit  these  have  awakened 
in  them,  but  their  tribute  as  well  to  the  equally 
ethical  and  unselfish  temper  they  recognise  in  the 
Catholics  along  with  whom  they  are  proud  to  fight, 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  in  the  same  trenches.  Amply 
supported  by  the  evidence  he  quotes,  M.  Thamin 
declares  of  the  trained,  thinking  men  of  whom  he 
writes  that  it  was  their  mobilisation  which  dis- 
covered them  to  themselves  and  developed  the 
faith,  the  sense  of  duty,  the  wonderful  tranquillity 
and  even  joy  in  their  terrible  tasks,  of  which  they 
had  not  before  known  themselves  to  be  capable. 
He  does  not  exaggerate  when  he  sums  it  up  in 
these  words : — 

"It  had  to  be  that  this  extraordinary  war 
should  mobilise  the  ideas  after  the  men.  All 
the  Ideas  of  France  are  ranged  In  battle.  The 
country  has  again  acknowledged  that  which  it 
believed,  the  University  that  which  it  taught. 
There  is  the  secret  of  this  mutually  reinforced 
confidence;  there  also  is  one  of  the  secrets  of 
a  unanimity  which  surprises  ourselves.  The 
most  unbelieving  have  discovered  for  them- 
selves a  faith,  the  most  realist  an  ideal;  and 


100  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

They  are  at  the  bottom  of  the  soul  of  those 
this  faith  and  this  ideal  are  the  same  for  all. 
even,  who  acknowledge  [getting]  them  from 
others."^ 

"For  us  it  is  a  philosophic  crusade  which  is 
at  stake.  The  word  has  been  printed  for  the 
first  time,  I  believe,  by  M.  Boutroux.  But 
the  thought  has  been  often  expressed.  More 
conscious  for  the  intellectual  elite,  it  has  pene- 
trated the  souls  of  all  the  combatants,  and  be- 
comes for  them  a  supplementary  principle  of 
courage.  All  have  heard  the  same  voices. 
And  though  one  of  them  has  spoken  it  more 
loudly  to  us,  all  have  more  or  less  felt  descend 
on  them  as  it  were  the  supernatural  succour  of 
the  idea  for  which  they  struggle.  They  know 
that  it  cannot  prevent  them  from  dying,  but 
that  It  itself  does  not  die,  and  that  the  gates 
of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it,"  - 
And  M.  Thamin  quotes  from  the  letter  of  a 
teacher  to  himself: — 

"Even  under  the  cannon  we  do  not  forget 

the  ideal   for  which  we  combat.     To  know 

that  the  accomplishment  of  our  present  duty 

surpasses  in  range  both  our  own  person  and 

^P.  i6o.  2p_  162. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  101 

our  time  and  even  our  country — since  it  con- 
cerns humanity  in  the  most  profound  and  com- 
plete sense  of  the  word — is  to  us  a  stimulus 
of  incalculable  vigour.     This  sentiment  you 
will  not  find  only  among  those  whom  a  certain 
culture  has  refined  and  rendered  fully  con- 
scious of  the  role  which  they  play;  you  will 
find  it  again  very  powerful,  though  necessarily 
a  little  vague,  among  the  humblest  and  least 
cultivated  of  the  soldiers."^ 
[In  illustration  of  this  last  sentence  we  may 
take  the  following,  quoted  by  M.  Barres,  from  the 
answer  of  "a  simple  man"  to  the  question  of  a 
neutral  journalist,  in  the  winter  of  19 14-15,  as  to 
what  he  was  fighting  for:  *'Simply  that  more  gen- 
tilesse  prevail  in  the  world".    And  another  soldier, 
in  19 15,  said:  "The  spiritual  element  is  the  dom- 
inating force  in  this  war".^]      M.  Thamin  also 
gives  instances  of  the  recognition  by  his  intellec- 
tuals of  the  equally  disinterested  devotion  of  their 
Catholic  comrades  and  of  the  reciprocal  feelings 
of  the  latter.     He  quotes  the  homage  of  a  Jesuit 
father  to  his  captain,  a  state-teacher,  and  he  adds 
this  sentence  from  a  teacher,  a  sub-lieutenant:  "Be- 
lieve, that  among  the  most  brave,  without  boast- 

^  P.  3 1  •  ^  Pp.  xiv,  xvi. 


102  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

ing,  there  are  always  found  a  teacher  and  a  cure".^ 
On  the  other  side,  the  Catholic,  we  have  that 
remarkable  book,  "L'Allemagne  et  les  Allies  de- 
vant  la  Conscience  chretienne".^  It  bears  the  Im- 
primatur of  the  Cardinal-Archbishop  of  Paris, 
and  consists  of  nine  essays  by  leading  clerics  and 
laymen  of  the  Gallican  Church.  They  are  writ- 
ten in  answer  to  the  Catholics  of  Germany,  who 
had  violently  reproached  their  fellow-churchmen 
in  France  with  supporting  a  political  system  and 
a  national  temper  which  were  anti-Christian,  with 
allying  themselves  to  Britain  and  Russia,  who  not 
only  were  responsible  for  the  war  (to  which  poor 
Germany  had  to  submit  in  self-defence)  but  are, 
either  as  Britain  is,  Protestant  and  free-thinking, 
or,  as  Russia,  schismatic  and  hostile  to  Catholi- 
cism. The  different  essays  engage  themselves  with 
these  points.  They  quietly  but  very  firmly  con- 
vict Germany  of  the  sole  responsibility  for  the  war. 
They  expose  her  crimes  in  violating  the  neutrality 
of  Belgium,  in  cruelly  treating  her  prisoners  of 
war  and  the  civilians  of  the  countries  she  has  wan- 
tonly invaded,  in  being  accessory  to  the  Armenian 
massacres,  and  in  attempting  to  excite  the  Moslem 

^  Pp.  21,  22.  -  Paris:  Bloud  et  Gay  [1916]. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  103 

world  to  a  "holy  war"  against  Christians.  They 
have  no  difficulty  in  exposing  that  characteristic 
lack  of  humour,  which  permits  German  Catholics, 
more  than  half  of  whose  countrymen  are  Luther- 
ans, and  so  many  of  them  rationalists,  to  reproach 
French  Catholics  with  their  friendship  for  "Eng- 
lish Protestants  and  free-thinkers".  But  they  go 
deeper  and  discover  that  the  present  war,  as  a 
whole,  is  one  between  essentially  Christian  ideals 
which  inspire  France  and  all  her  Allies,  and  the 
German  ideals  that  are  fundamentally  immoral 
and  anti-Christian.  Monsignor  Chapon,  the 
Bishop  of  Nice,  in  meeting  the  charge  that  French 
Catholics  have  become  partners  with  a  Govern- 
ment in  France,  whose  principles  are  atheistic  and 
whose  policy  has  been  inspired  by  malignity  to- 
wards all  religion,  admits  the  injustice  and  cruelty 
which  his  Church  has  suffered  from  the  State.  Yet 
(he  says)  these  notwithstanding,  the  French 
Catholics  are  with  the  French  Government  to- 
day, because  it  and  the  people  behind  it  oppose, 
with  the  vision  and  generous  courage  that  are 
characteristic  of  the  race,  ideals  of  justice  and 
freedom  which  are  necessary  to  the  peace  of  the 
world  and  the  brotherhood  of  nations,  against  a 
German  philosophy  and  policy,  which  would  surely 


104.  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

be  fatal  to  these.  The  Bishop  boldly  declares  for 
the  essential  Christianity  of  the  principles  of  the 
French  Revolution — Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fra- 
ternity— which,  as  he  justly  shows,  have  their 
deepest  sources  In  the  Gospel  of  Jesus.  And  as 
justly  he  contrasts  the  German  philosophy  of  the 
State,  as  a  thing  above  moral  law  and  deriving  Its 
authority  from  power  alone,  with  the  dominant 
French  Idea  of  the  State,  as  merely  the  larger 
family,  In  which  the  rights  of  the  Individual  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  duties  of  the  nation  to  other 
nations,  are  carefully  observed.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  which  of  these  is  the  Christian  philosophy, 
and  therefore  deserving  of  the  support  of  the 
Church.  Or  as  Monslgnor  Baudrillart  puts  It  In 
his  "Avertlssement"  to  the  volume: — 

"Monslgnor  the  Bishop  of  Nice  shows  that, 
in  very  reality,  behind  the  facts  and  the  crimes, 
behind  all  the  warlike  enterprise  of  to-day, 
with  the  proceedings  It  Involves,  there  Is  a 
doctrine  which  consecrates,  inspires,  and 
directs  it;  the  culture  and  the  militarism  of 
Germany  strictly  hold  together;  they  only  exist 
the  one  by  the  other  and  the  one  for  the  other; 
pan-Germanism  has  become  a  theory  of  the 
world,  a  philosophy,  a  religion;  It  has  informe 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  105 

the  German  soul  to  the  pitch  of  appearing 
to    have    engrossed    it    altogether.      France, 
whatever  be  her  errors,  has  at  least  not  in- 
carnated them  to  the  point  of  making  them  her 
own  with  unanimity  and  of  fixing  herself  in 
them  as  in  the  absolute.     Moreover,  the  ideal 
which  she  professes  is  a  generous  Ideal,  which, 
in  the  last  analysis  can  be  reconciled  with  the 
Christian  Ideal". ^ 
M.  Bompard,  the  French  Ambassador  to  the 
Porte,  has  given  a  vivid  picture  of  how  Catholic 
clerics  and  laymen,  monks  and  nuns,  professors, 
teachers  and  others,  who  had  been  driven  from 
France  by  the  laws  against  the  Church,  flocked 
back  through   Constantinople   from  the   further 
East,  on  the  declaration  of  war,  in  order  to  return 
to  their  fatherland  and  take  service  either  in  the 
combatant  or  the  medical  units  of  her  forces.     In 
their  ardour  they  struggled  with  each  other  for 
passages  home.    For  they  said  (I  cannot  give  you 
the  exact  words,  but  they  were  In  substance  these)  : 
"The  sins  of  our  own  Mother  are  as  snow  com- 
pared with  the  scarlet  guilt  of  the  German  power". 
I  am  told  that  by  19 15  there  were  no  fewer  than 
25,000  French  priests  in  the  fighting  ranks   of 
ip.  vi. 


106  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

France,  of  whom  looo  had  given  their  lives  for 
the  Allied  Cause. 

Nor  have  the  French  Protestants  been  behind 
their  countrymen  in  conscience  and  courage.  By 
October,  19 17,  450  pastors  had  been  mobilised 
and  120  students  of  divinity.  [Another  estimate 
gives  68  Protestant  chaplains  and  "scattered 
throughout  the  ranks  as  officers  or  soldiers  340 
more  .  .  .  not  a  large  number — but  how  many 
Protestant  pastors  are  there  in  the  whole  of 
France?  A  thousand  at  the  outside,  including  all 
sects''.^]  By  the  above  date  there  had  died  for 
their  country  23  pastors,  4  evangelists,  and  31 
students.  Here  is  the  witness  of  one  of  them, 
Alfred  Eugene  Casalis,  an  undergraduate  of  the 
University  of  Montauban.  "Too  young  to  be 
called  up;  but  though  strongly  and  even  passion- 
ately opposed  to  war  and  militarism,  he  could  not 
stand  by  while  others  were  giving  their  lives. 
.  .  .  He  had  Volunteered'  for  the  Mission 
Field,  and  in  the  same  spirit  'volunteered'  to  serve 
his  country  and  her  righteous  cause.  .  .  . 
Young  as  he  was — barely  nineteen — he  looked 
upon  the  France  of  19 14  not  as  she  was,  but  as 

^  Barres,  "The  Faldi  of  France,"  translated  by  Eliza- 
beth Marbury,  p.  48. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  107 

she  might  one  day  be.  With  the  clear  vision  of 
the  soldier-mystic  and  the  soldier-lover,  he  beheld 
his  Ideal  France,  the  France  of  to-morrow,  rising 
renewed  and  purified  from  the  ashes  of  the  war. 
For  that  France  he  not  only  laid  down  his  life 
with  all  its  gifts  and  promises,  but  poured  out  his 
soul,  praying  only  that  whatever  of  spiritual  force 
might  have  dwelt  in  himself  should  by  his  death 
flow  out  and  inspire  all  who  had  shared  his  own 
efforts  and  ideals."^ 

"I  am  a  soldier,  of  my  own  free  will,  and 
not  by  compulsion.  What  can  one  do !  It 
is  all  very  well  to  be  a  pacifist,  there  are  cir- 
cumstances in  which  nothing  can  hold  one  back. 
To  begin  with,  when  we  see  what  atrocities 
our  enemies  commit,  we  can't  help  realising 
that  they  must  be  put  a  stop  to  as  quickly  as 
possible,  and  if  one  can  help  in  doing  that,  one 
must  lend  a  hand  at  once.  And  when  you 
know  there  are  such  creatures  as  slackers, 
people  who  are  shirking  their  bit,  one  can't 

^  "A  Young  Soldier  of  France  and  of  Jesus  Christ: 
Letters  of  Alfred  Eugene  Casalis,  191 5,"  translated  by 
C.  W.  Mackintosh.  Eastbourne:  Strange  the  Printer 
Ltd.,  1916. 


108  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

hang  back :  one  must  come  out.^  The  cardinal 
virtue  of  the  Christian  soldier  Is  tenacity,  Hold 
fast  that  which  thou  hast.  ...  I  shall 
fight  with  a  good  conscience  and  without  fear, 
I  hope,  certainly  without  hate,  because  I  be- 
lieve our  cause  to  be  just,  because  France  vic- 
torious will  have  a  mission  to  fulfil,  In  elevat- 
ing and  educating  mankind  for  brotherhood. 
I  believe  this,  because  I  myself  have  accepte'd 
this  vocation,  and  because  I  know  many  others 
who  have  made  It  theirs.  I  feel  myself  filled 
with  an  illimitable  hope,  which  shows  me 
through  death  the  beginnings  of  a  renewed  and 
glorious  life  .  .  .  you  have  no  Idea  of  the 
peace  In  which  I  live.  .  .  .  Francis  Monod, 
Robert  Prunier,  and  others,  many  others  have 
died  thinking  of  this  glorious  reign  which 
must  come,  which  is  coming.  Their  death  Is  a 
step  towards  the  coming  of  this  Kingdom,  as 
was  their  life.  And  then  the  new  France  must 
stand  up  for  that:  'to  make  Christ  King'.  We 
take  oath  of  allegiance.  Lord;  we  will  work  to 
bring  about  Thy  Kingdom:  we  will  give  our 
lives  for  that  ideal." 
Then  at  the  fighting  front  he  wrote : — 
ip.  14. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  109 

"Often  I  dream  of  the  France  that  is  to  be, 
the  France  that  will  be  born  of  the  'War  for 
Freedom'.    She  must  understand  that  it  is  her 
duty  to  be  humane.    .    .    .    For  me,  military 
life  has  simplified  everything.     Things  have 
taken  on  their  true  values,  their  full  signifi- 
cance.    Difficulties  which  have  seemed  almost 
insurmountable  for  me  have  disappeared.    In- 
tellectual sacrifices  which  I  thought  I  could 
never  accept  have  accomplished  themselves  al- 
most unconsciously  and  without  a  pang.    And 
instead  of  them  I  find  a  new  vitality,  an  in- 
tense  desire   for  action.     And  with  this  al- 
ways peace.    .    .    .    My  central  preoccupation 
is  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  this  war.    I  am  con- 
fident our  cause  is  just  and  good,  and  that  we 
have  right  on  our  side.    But  it  is  essential  that 
this  war  should  be  fruitful  as  well,  and  that 
from  all  these  deaths  a  new  life  should  spring 
forth  for  humanity." 
How  amply  he  had  fulfilled  the  noble  resolu- 
tions he  made  on  his  first  call  to  serve : — 

"We  must  search  our  hearts  to  see  whether 
we  can  fight  .  .  .  whether  we  have  firmly 
resolved  to  be  the  champions  of  Right,  of  Jus- 
tice, and  of  Liberty;  whether  we   are  suffi- 


110  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

ciently  in  love  with  the  Justice  that  must  he 
established  afterwards  to  fight  in  the  certainty 
that  our  victory  will  give  another  good  work- 
man to  the  task  of  universal  regeneration.  .  .  . 
"That  is  the  Vigil  for  us.    And  our  watch- 
word is  'Christ  and  France'." 
Alfred  Eugene   Casalis  fell  on  the  9th  May, 
19 1 5,  at  Roclincourt,  Artois,  when  charging  with 
his  company  against  the  foe. 

[M.  Barres  gives  us  other  utterances  of  Pro- 
testants, some  indicating  the  inner  conflict  they 
felt  between  their  Christian  heart  for  peace  and 
their  sense  of  duty  to  a  cause  so  manifestly  just; 
and  he  says  truly — after  noting  that  besides  their 
passion  for  the  redemption  of  Alsace  is  their  con- 
viction that  they  "are  struggling  for  the  freedom 
of  the  smaller  peoples" — that  "without  this  cer- 
titude many  of  these  Protestants  would  be  tor- 
mented, paralysed,  and  made  incapable  of  action". 
He  quotes  Pierre  de  Maupeou,  killed  on  28th 
May,  1915  :  "So  that  at  moments  I  may  not  fail 
in  my  duty,  I  must,  indeed,  be  convinced  of  the 
beauty  and  of  the  righteousness  of  this  cause". 
Another,  Francis  Monod:  "War!  why,  more  than 
ever  we  seem  to  be  struggling  for  peace.  When 
the  fictitious  unity  which  was  nearly  established 


THE  WITNESS  OF  FRANCE  111 

east  of  us  forty-four  years  ago  shall  be  dissolved, 
France,  at  the  head  of  progress  and  liberty,  shall 
aim  effectively,  then  as  always  for  the  peace  of 
the  world."  M.  Barres  gives  many  other  ex- 
pressions of  the  faith  and  vision  of  those  Protes- 
tant soldiers.^] 

I  have  read  to  you  these  utterances  of  believing 
Frenchmen,  not  only  because  they  reveal  the  in- 
domitable idealism  of  their  own  people,  but  also 
because  they  express,  as  Frenchmen  most  frankly 
can,  the  high  faith  and  conscience  of  the  justice  of 
our  common  cause,  which  equally  inspire  multi- 
tudes of  the  more  reticent  soldiers  of  the  British 
Army.  They  speak  not  for  themselves  only,  but 
for  all  the  Allies  in  this  war  for  the  freedom  and 
the  peace  of  the  world.  It  is  a  wonderful  con- 
cord of  testimony.  Frenchmen  who  had  no  creed, 
French  Catholics,  French  Protestants,  [and  M. 
Barres  quotes  in  addition  the  witness  of  French 
Jews,  French  Socialists,  and  those  whom  he  calls 
Traditionalists^],  ready  before  the  war  "to  de- 
vour each  other,"  are  inspired  to-day  by  the  same 
moral  aims,  and  in  close  and  generous  comrade- 
ship fight  for  their  country  as  the  champion  of 

^  "The  Faith  of  France,"  ch.  iv. 
^  Chs.  v.,  vi.,  vii. 


112  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

ideals  on  which  the  future  of  humanity  depends. 
The  war  has  yielded  no  more  signal  proof  of  the 
spiritual  character  of  the  forces  which  have 
roused  and  which  bind  the  Allies  in  this  awful 
Crisis. 

Yes,  Americans,  in  the  French  we  have  com- 
rades splendidly  worthy  of  the  best  efforts  we  can 
put  forth  in  our  warfare.  God  grant  that  we, 
on  our  part,  may  prove  worthy  of  the  French. 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE^ 

My  Fellow  Ministers, — Before  I  begin  the 
subject  on  which  I  am  to  address  you,  it  is  fitting 
that  I  should  read  you  some  sentences  from  the 
Letter  in  which  the  Commission  of  the  General 
Assembly  of  my  Church  has  commended  my  pres- 
ent mission  to  the  Churches  and  Christians  of  the 
United  States. 

"At  Edinburgh,  the  sixth  day 
of  March,  in  the  year  one 
thousand,     nine     hundred 
and  eighteen. 
"This  Commission  of  the  General  Assembly  of 
the  United  Free  Church  of  Scotland,  understand- 
ing that  the  Very  Reverend  Sir  George  Adam 
Smith,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Principal  of  the  University 
of  Aberdeen,  Ex-Moderator  of  the  General  As- 

^  An  Address  delivered  at  various  Conferences  of  local 
Federations  of  Ministers  of  Christian  Churches,  and  in 
parts  given  also  at  public  meetings. 

"5 


116  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

sembly,  has  accepted  an  official  invitation  from 
America  to  address  public  gatherings  on  the  moral 
aims  of  the  war,  and  having  learned  that  he  Is 
shortly  to  proceed  to  America  on  this  mission, 
takes  the  opportunity  of  conveying  through  him  to 
the  Presbyterian  Churches  in  America  the  frater- 
nal greetings  of  the  United  Free  Church  of  Scot- 
land, and  affectionately  commends  him  to  the 
ministers,  office-bearers,  and  members  of  these 
Sister  Churches  across  the  seas. 

"It  authorises  him  to  express  to  these  Churches 
and  to  the  people  of  America  the  gratification 
which  Is  felt  throughout  the  United  Free  Church 
of  Scotland  at  the  resolution  adopted  by  Congress 
a  year  ago,  which  led  to  America's  entrance  into 
the  war,  and  its  admiration  of  the  response  which 
the  American  nation  has  made  to  the  call  ad- 
dressed to  It  by  Its  President.  It  recognises  that 
President  Wilson  has  interpreted  the  highest  spirit 
of  the  American  people,  and  that  the  adhesion  of 
America  to  the  Cause  of  the  Allies  has  brought 
to  them  not  merely  an  increase  of  material 
strength,  but  also  a  deeper  sense  of  the  sacredness 
of  the  moral  and  spiritual  issues  that  are  at  stake 
in  the  present  conflict.  Profoundly  convinced  that 
the  high  ideals  of  a  nation  draw  their  inspiration 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE     117 

and  support  from  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  this  Com- 
mission desires  Sir  George  Adam  Smith  to  be  its 
representative  in  assuring  the  Churches  of  Amer- 
ica of  the  value  which  it  attaches  to  their  co-opera- 
tion in  the  work  of  maintaining  in  their  purity  and 
in  their  strength  the  spiritual  motives  which  have 
drawn  the  allied  nations  into  this  war,  and  in 
promising  to  the  Delegation  which  the  Presby- 
terian Church  in  the  U.S.A.  is  sending  to  this 
country  an  enthusiastic  welcome." 

In  the  middle  of  the  war  our  General  Assembly 
of  1916  "gave  thanks  to  God  that  the  nation  was 
sustained  and  united  by  a  clear  conviction  of  the 
righteousness  of  its  cause,"  and  expressed  their 
confidence  "that  a  policy  so  disinterested  would  be 
pursued  to  the  end  with  unflinching  resolution." 
In  the  spirit  of  that  deliverance  the  Commission 
of  the  same  Assembly  exhorted  the  men  of  the 
Church  to  respond  to  His  Majesty's  call  for  fresh 
levies  and  "join  the  ranks  of  those  who  had  al- 
ready given  themselves  to  maintain  the  cause  of 
righteousness."  My  Church  thus  expressed  a 
double  conviction — of  the  justice  of  the  cause  of 
the  Allies,  and  of  the  duty  of  all  Christians  to 
support  our  Government  In  defending  it  by  arms. 
The  same  double  conviction  was  generally  shared 


118  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

by  all  the  other  Churches  of  Great  Britain.  The 
response  of  their  members  was  immediate  and 
practically  universal.  An  exact  register  of  the 
sons  of  ministers  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  proved 
that  at  least  90  per  cent,  of  those  of  them  who 
were  of  military  age  had  joined  the  colours  before 
conscription  came  in.  Similar  figures  were  ob- 
tained for  other  Churches;  and,  had  it  been  pos- 
sible to  procure  statistics  for  all  our  Christian 
homes,  I  believe  that  the  results  would  not  have 
been  far  short  of  the  same.  With  few  exceptions 
the  Christians  of  Great  Britain  were,  however 
reluctantly,  convinced  of  their  nation's  and  their 
own  duty  in  this  crisis  and  were  resolute  to  carry 
that  duty  through. 

I  say  "however  reluctantly,"  for  like  all  other 
Christians  we  were  devoted  to  peace.  We  hated 
war.  We  saw  with  dismay  the  disruption  of 
Christendom.  We  remembered  what  our  religion 
owed  to  Germany.  Our  missionaries  were  co- 
operating with  German  missionaries  in  various 
parts  of  the  world.  In  recent  recollection  we  had 
the  world-conference  on  missions  held  in  Edin- 
burgh, attended  by  many  Germans,  and  the  good 
hope  it  gave  of  a  firmer  alliance  among  the 
Churches  of  the  nations.     And  not  a  few  of  us 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE  119 

had  grateful  memories  of  German  schools  and 
teachers. 

Our  desire  for  peace,  and  our  honest  efforts 
for  many  years  to  ensure  it,  had  been  shared,  with 
few  exceptions,  by  all  the  people  of  Great  Britain. 
You  know  how  unprepared  my  people  were  for  a 
great  war.  That  unpreparedness  was  part  of  the 
proof  of  the  sincerity  of  the  national  will  for 
peace.  And  when  the  crisis  came  our  Government 
went  to  the  utmost  length — went  the  length  of 
straining  our  relations  with  the  nations  friendly 
to  us — in  the  effort  to  avert  war.  The  Foreign 
Minister,  Sir  Edward  Grey,  proposed  arbitration 
on  the  questions  that  had  risen  between  Austria 
and  Serbia,  and  all  the  Powers  except  one  agreed 
to  his  proposals.  That  one  was  Germany,  for 
even  Austria — doubtless  conscious  of  the  moral 
weakness  of  her  case  against  Serbia  after  the  lat- 
ter's  almost  complete  submission — seemed  Inclined 
to  arbitration.  Sir  Edward  Grey  then  asked  the 
German  Government  to  suggest  some  other  plan. 
This  also  they  refused  to  do.  They  had  but  one 
plan,  long  prepared  for,  and  that  was  War,  and 
they  thought  that  the  day  for  its  execution  had 
arrived.  Had  the  diplomatic  correspondence 
published  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  war  left  us 


120  OUR  CO^IMON  CONSCIENCE 

in  any  doubt  as  to  this,  the  doubt  would  have  been 
dispelled  by  Prince  Lichnowsky's  Memorandum. 
That  German  testimony  shows  how  earnestly  and 
how  honestly  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  laboured  for 
peace,  and  how  Germany  alone  frustrated  the 
achievement  of  a  purpose  accepted  by  every  other 
people.  Here  are  the  German  Prince's  own 
words :  "The  impression  became  even  stronger 
that  we  desired  war  in  all  circumstances.  The 
more  I  pressed  the  less  willing  were  they  [the  War 
Lords  in  Berlin]  to  alter  their  course."  "Thus 
ended  my  London  mission.  It  was  wrecked  not 
by  the  perfidy  of  the  British  but  by  the  perfidy  of 
our  policy."  "I  had  to  support  in  London  a 
policy  which  I  knew  to  be  fallacious.  I  was  paid 
out  for  It,  for  it  was  a  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost." 
"We  encouraged  Count  Berchtold  to  attack  Ser- 
bia ...  we  rejected  the  British  proposals  of 
mediation  ...  we  deliberately  destroyed  the 
possibility  of  a  peaceful  settlement.  In  view  of 
these  indisputable  facts  It  is  not  surprising  that 
the  whole  civilised  world  outside  Germany  at- 
tributed to  us  the  sole  guilt  for  the  world-war." 
Such  is  the  deliberate  witness  of  the  German  Am- 
bassador to  London,  this  Prussian  nobleman,  this 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE     121 

friend  of  the  Kaiser,  this  unwilling  and  alarmed 
agent  of  his  policy. 

Thus  were  the  Allies  forced  to  war,  some  in 
self-defence,  some,  like  Russia,  to  defend  their 
allies  or  dependents,  some,  like  Great  Britain,  to 
keep  their  sworn  word  to  preserve  the  integrity  of 
Belgium,  but  all  alike  in  order  to  restore  peace,  in 
face  of  the  most  treacherous  and  criminal  assault 
upon  peace  which  was  ever  conceived  by  any  nation 
or  group  of  nations.  That  original  conscience 
which  drove  us  to  fight  Germany,  the  instinct  that 
we  were  battling  for  the  peace  of  the  world,  and 
that  this  would  be  impossible  till  Germany  was 
conquered  by  force  of  arms,  has  been  confirmed 
and  articulated  by  all  that  the  successive  stages  of 
the  war  have  exposed  to  us  of  her  policy  and 
methods.  As  your  President  has  said:  "The  Ger- 
man power,  a  thing  without  conscience,  honour, 
or  capacity  for  covenanted  peace,  must  be 
crushed." 

Both  in  your  country  and  in  mine  there  have 
been  not  a  few  who,  though  convinced  of  Ger- 
many's guilt,  have  declined  to  approve  the  deduc- 
tion that  it  was  our  duty  to  fight  her;  and  some 
go  so  far  as  to  affirm  that  in  no  circumstance  is  it 
right  to  meet  force  by  force;  and  that  no  Chris- 


122  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

tian  ought  to  bear  arms  for  any  cause  however 
just.  I  wish  to  examine  these  positions  so  far  as 
they  are  held  by  Christian  men  on  supposed  re- 
ligious grounds. 

Their  pacificism,  it  seems  to  me,  rests  upon  a 
misreading  of  our  Scriptures,  and  upon  a  confu- 
sion between  merely  political  peace  and  the  only 
peace  which  Christ  promised  or  ensures  to  His 
people — the  inward  spiritual  peace  which  follows 
on  reconciliation  with  God,  on  duty  faithfully 
done,  and  on  sacrifice  patiently  borne,  if  need  be, 
to  the  uttermost. 

The  truth  is  that  in  the  New  Testament  as  in 
the  Old,  Peace  the  Blessing  is  promised  only  as  the 
result  and  reward  of  other  things;  Peace  the  Duty 
has  never  a  primary  but  always  a  secondary  place. 
Righteousness  comes  first — justice,  truth,  purity, 
discipHne,  patience,  and  courage:  the  peaceable 
fruits  of  righteousness;  the  wisdom  that  is  from 
above  is  first  pure  then  peaceable;  the  work  of 
righteousness  shall  be  peace,  and  the  effect  of 
righteousness  quietness  and  assurance  for  ever. 

Christ  never  promised  political  peace.  Nor 
did  He  condemn  all  war  between  nations  any  more 
than  He  condemned  the  forcible  execution  of 
justice  within  the  nation  itself.     It  would  be  dif- 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE  123 

ficult  to  believe  that  He  who  bade  His  disciple 
Render  to  Casar  the  things  that  are  Casar's,  by 
the  payment  of  a  just  tax,  would  restrain  His 
people  from  serving  the  State  with  their  lives  in 
defence  of  its  freedom  or  at  the  call  of  interna- 
tional justice.  In  such  circumstances  the  things 
of  Casar  and  the  things  of  God  become  the  same 
things,  and  in  serving  the  one  we  also  serve  the 
Other.  To  quote  Christ's  own  example,  as  of 
Him  who  did  no  violence,  is  beside  the  argu- 
ment. To  say  to  Christians — as  is  sometimes 
said — ^that  they  ought  not  to  be  soldiers,  because 
it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  their  Master,  if  on 
earth  to-day,  as  bearing  arms,  is  just  as  true  and 
just  as  irrelevant  as  to  say  that  He  would  not  have 
been  a  statesman,  nor  a  judge,  nor  an  active  guar- 
dian of  civic  order — that  He  would  not  have 
acted  as  President  of  the  United  States,  nor  have 
sat  in  any  of  your  courts  of  justice,  nor  served  as 
a  policeman  on  your  streets — of&ces  which,  never- 
theless, though  we  have  not  His  example,  no  one 
doubts  that  Christians  may  accept,  and  Indeed 
ought  not  to  refuse,  if  God  have  granted  them 
the  strength  and  talents  for  such  vocations.  Nay 
more,  it  is  true  that  a  war  for  justice  for  others 
and  the  redemption  of  the  oppressed,  may  some- 


124  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

times  offer  the  signal  line  along  which  Christians 
are  called  to  obey  both  their  Lord's  Word  and 
His  Example  by  taking  up  their  cross.  Let  me 
quote  to  you  these  sentences  of  a  young  Scottish 
thinl^er:  "It  needs  no  argument  to  prove  that  a 
soldier,  using  the  weapons  of  his  special  calling, 
may  dismiss  all  thought  of  his  own  inclination  and 
safety  as  completely  as  the  noblest  of  martyrs; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  methods  outwardly 
peaceful  or  even  sacred,  may,  in  the  rivalry  of 
commerce  or  of  ecclesiastical  policy,  be  used  with 
all  the  ruthlessness  of  the  sword.  .  .  .  The  final 
test  is  inward.  Not  outward  force,  but  inward 
malice,  is  the  unfailing  mark  of  the  natural  order 
in  its  contest  with  the  Spiritual."^  In  this,  as  in 
everything,  it  is  not  the  letter  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment but  its  Spirit  that  must  guide  us. 

The  foundation  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  Is  truth 
and  justice  as  well  as  love ;  if  on  anything  less  than 
all  these  we  strive  to  build  peace,  we  are  building 
on  sand.  To  put  peace  before  justice,  before  the 
redemption  of  the  slave,  before  the  deliverance 
of  the  tortured  and  the  defence  of  women  and 

^  G.  F.  Barbour,  "A  Philosophical  Study  of  Christian 
Ethics,"  p.  374.  Edinburgh:  W.  Blackwood  &  Sons, 
1911. 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE  125 

children,  is  to  turn  Christianity  upside  down. 
You  remember  the  word  of  the  Lord  which  came 
to  the  prophet  Ezekiel  when  he  lay  prostrate  un- 
der the  sense  of  the  awful  preparations  for  judg- 
ment which  were  revealed  to  him,  Son  of  man, 
stand  on  thy  feet!  On  thy  feet,  not  on  they  head ! 
It  seems  to  me  that  our  Christian  pacifists  are 
standing  on  their  heads  when  they  deny  our  duty 
to  fight  the  cruelty  and  perfidy  of  the  German 
power  with  the  only  weapons  which  that  power 
understands — as  you  in  America  have  proved  by 
your  two  and  a  half  years'  peaceful  experiments 
with  it.  They  are  standing  on  their  heads.  We  may 
admire  the  gymnastic  of  the  attitude,  but  we  can- 
not ascribe  it  to  either  reason  or  moral  strength. 
In  their  debate  our  pacifist  friends  sometimes 
throw  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  into  a  false 
antithesis,  as  though  the  one  were  all  for  war  and 
the  other  all  for  peace.  What  are  the  facts? 
The  history  of  Israel  is  the  record  of  how  a  na- 
tion, under  the  guidance  of  God's  Spirit  and  His 
chastisement  of  them,  gradually  rose  above  their 
primitive  barbarity  and  lust  of  iconquest,  and 
nevertheless  retained  a  conscience  of  their  duty, 
when  challenged,  to  witness  for  their  faith  and 
their    freedom    by    force    of    arms.      And    you 


1«6  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

know  how  in  loyalty  to  this  conscience  they  rose 
against  the  Greek  tyrant  who  sought  to  crush 
them  into  apostacy,  who  drove  them  from  their 
land  and  ruined  their  temple;  and  how  by  the 
sword  they  beat  him  back,  and  not  only  regained 
their  liberty  to  keep  the  law  delivered  by  God  to 
their  fathers,  but  out  of  their  martyrdom  in  war, 
out  of  the  faithfulness  of  their  sons,  who  fell  for 
the  Nation  and  the  Faith  on  the  battle-field,  de- 
rived as  their  reward  some  of  the  strongest  assur- 
ances of  the  resurrection  and  the  life  to  come 
which  are  expressed  in  the  Old  Testament.  But 
it  is  this  very  faithfulness  under  arms  which  the 
New  Testament  glorifies — praising  the  heroes, 
who  through  faith  subdued  kingdoms,  wrought 
righteousness,  waxed  valiant  in  fight,  turned  to 
flight  the  armies  of  the  aliens,  what  time  women 
received  their  dead  raised  to  life  again,  and  others 
not  accepting  deliverance  obtained  a  better  resur- 
rection.    Of  whom  the  world  was  not  worthy  f^ 

^  In  the  days  of  our  Lord  and  His  Apostles  the  present 
national  conditions  were  not  in  being.  When  religious 
bodies  or  individuals  in  our  midst  deduce  from  the  New 
Testament  the  principle  that  no  Christian  state  should 
ever  fight,  even  for  freedom,  faith,  or  justice  to  others, 
it  must  be  pointed  out  to  them  that  the  New  Testament 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE  127 

Let  me  quote  to  you  some  utterances  of  great 
Christians  upon  this  point. 

The  first  shall  be  one  of  John  Calvin,  very 
relevant  to  the  present  case  which  civilisation  has 
against  Germany: — 

"Since  it  makes  no  difference  whether  it  is  by 
a  king  or  by  the  lowest  of  the  people  that  a  hostile 
and  devastating  inroad  is  made  into  a  district  over 
which  they  have  no  authority,  all  alike  are  to  be 
regarded  and  punished  as  robbers.  Natural 
equity  and  duty,  therefore,  demand  that  princes 
be  armed  not  only  to  repress  private  crimes  by 
judicial  inflictions,  but  to  defend  the  subjects  com- 
mitted to  their  guardianship  wherever  they  are 
hostilely  assailed.  Such  even  the  Holy  Spirit  in 
many  passages  of  Scripture  declares  to  be  lawful." 

Mr.  Gladstone  said:  "The  peace  party  has 
sprung  prematurely  to  the  conclusion  that  wars 
may  be  considered  as  having  closed  their  melan- 
choly and  miserable  history.  Such  a  view,  though 
respectable  and  even  noble,  is  a  serious  error. 
You  cannot  detest  war  too  much.  No  war,  ex- 
gives  no  direct  teaching  on  the  subject,  for  the  problem 
was  not  present  to  its  writers — no  Christian  state  then 
existed.  The  indirect  teaching  of  the  New  Testament 
has  been  dealt  with  above. 


128  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

cept  that  for  liberty,  does  not  contain  elements  of 
corruption  as  well  as  of  misery.  But  however 
deplorable  wars  may  be,  there  are  times  when 
justice,  when  faith,  when  the  welfare  of  mankind 
require  a  man  not  to  shrink  from  undertaking 
them." 

Or  take  this  from  Dale  of  Birmingham,  very 
appropriate  to  our  present  warfare  and  Its  moral 
aims : — 

"I  believe  in  peace — true  peace — at  any  price; 
in  peace  even  at  the  price  of  war.  .  .  .  Wrongs 
so  flagrant  may  be  committed  by  a  despotic  and 
irresponsible  Government  as  not  only  to  provoke 
the  indignation  of  the  civilised  world,  but  to  justify 
peremptory  and  forcible  intervention.  ...  By 
all  means  let  us  try  moral  Influence  first  [as  you 
Americans  have  fully  and  patiently  tried  It],  but 
while  me  maintain  a  large  army  and  splendid  navy 
to  protect  our  own  shores,  I  trust  that  we  shall 
never  shrink  from  using  both  on  behalf  of  justice 
and  freedom,  wherever  our  national  duty  and 
our  national  honour  require  us  to  afford  the  good 
cause  material  as  well  as  moral  support." 

And  I  quote  still  another,  both  because  he  is  a 
German,  and  because  his  words,  though  written 
more  than  fifty  years  ago,  are  singularly  relevant 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE  129 

to  the  position  of  the  Allies  in  the  present  crisis : — 
"The  characteristic  of  a  lawful  war,"  says  Har- 
less,  in  his  "Christliche  Ethik,"  "is  that  it  is  neces- 
sary in  the  interest  of  justice.  Its  justification  is 
to  be  found  in  those  international  duties  which 
flow  from  the  special  callings  appointed  by  God 
to  the  several  nations  in  their  mutual  relations, 
and  the  violation  of  which  a  regularly  constituted 
association  of  nations  has  a  right  to  avenge."^ 
The  italics  are  mine.  Here  we  have  already  the 
idea  of  a  League  of  Nations  for  the  enforcement 
of  justice  and  of  peace.  That  is  one  of  the  ideals 
the  Allies  are  fighting  for.  It  has  been  accepted 
by  their  leading  statesmen.  Though  the  practical 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  carrying  it  out  are  very 
great,  we  must  keep  in  mind  that  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent it  has  already  been  realised  by  the  league  of 
the  Allies  in  this  war.  Inspired  by  a  common  con- 
science for  moral  ends  in  the  highest  interests  of 
all  mankind;  and,  as  essential  to  these  ends,  united 
in  an  endeavour  to  beat  down  the  most  terrible 
assault  ever  delivered  on  the  freedom  and  justice 
of  the  world.     In  whatever  form  "the  League  of 

^  Quoted  by  Luthardt,  "Moral  Truths  of  Christian- 
ity," English  Translation,  p.  368.  Edinburgh:  T.  &  T. 
Clark,  1873. 


130  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

Nations"  may  be  possible  or  desirable,  this  is 
certain,  that  it  can  be  realised  only  through  the 
defeat  of  Germany  and  in  her  disillusionment  of 
the  false  ideals  which  have  driven  her  to  war. 

During  these  four  years  of  war  we  British  have 
indeed  appreciated — by  contrast — the  infinite 
blessings  of  political  peace.  Not  a  day  has  passed 
without  yielding  its  tragic  motives  for  praying  and 
for  labouring  towards  such  a  peace,  if  only  it  may 
be  secured  without  cost  to  conscience  and  to  duty. 
But  never  was  a  people  granted  so  full  an  oppor- 
tunity, as  God  has  granted  us,  of  distinguishing 
between  the  peace  that  is  false  and  the  peace  that 
is  true.  We  narrowly  escaped  the  one;  we  have 
had  rich  experience  of  the  other. 

We  might  have  had  peace  as  the  world  calls 
it.  Germans,  insulting  our  honour,  sought  to 
bribe  us  into  a  neutrality  which  would  have  be- 
trayed our  friends  of  France,  and  left  Belgium 
in  the  lurch.  Yes,  we  might  have  had  peace. 
But  It  would  have  been  peace  without  righteous- 
ness— peace  with  a  bad  conscience — peace  with 
shame  as  we  knew  ourselves  unfaithful  to  weaker 
but  gallant  peoples  who  trusted  our  'vord  for  the 
security  of  their  national  existence;  peace  with  re- 
morse as  we  saw  them  deprived  of  their  freedom, 


PEACE— FALSE  AND  TRUE     131 

and  our  allies,  taking  the  field  without  us,  crushed 
by  a  ruthless  and  remorseless  foe;  peace  with 
dishonour  as  we  proved  faithless  to  our  fathers' 
traditions  of  liberty  and  justice,  and  found  that  we 
had  betrayed  those  national  interests  and  free  in- 
stitutions with  the  charge  of  which  Providence 
has  entrusted  us  throughout  our  vast  Empire; 
and  peace  with  fear,  when  we  came  to  realise,  as 
in  neutrality  we  should  assuredly  have  done,  that 
without  allies  or  friends,  we  must  meet,  in  our 
turn,  the  onset  of  the  hatred  and  ambition  of  ar- 
rogant and  pitiless  victors. 

On  the  other  hand,  what  has  God  given  us  since 
we  went  to  war  and,  we  may  say,  just  because  we 
went  to  war  as  our  signal  and  inevitable  duty?  A 
peace  unprecedented  throughout  our  kingdom  and 
Empire.  A  unity  and  co-operation  that  have 
never  been  matched  among  us — not  perfect,  I 
admit,  but  surpassing  all  our  expectations  and 
deserts.  Party  strife  and  faction  have  been  hushed 
almost  entirely.  Class  and  race  passion  have  been 
greatly  reduced.  It  is,  I  repeat,  a  national  and 
imperial  unity  far  above  what  we  or  any  other 
Empire  ever  experienced.  But  deeper  still  there 
has  been  the  tranquillity  of  heart,  reserved  for  all 
who  devote  themselves  to  moral,  unselfish  ideals, 


132  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

and  who  have  resolved,  come  what  may,  to  do 
their  duty  by  God  and  their  fellow-men.  Such  a 
peace,  the  surest  source  of  courage,  we  have  seen 
in  our  statesmen,  and  in  all  who  bear  the  chief  and 
most  agonising  responsibilities  of  the  war.  Such 
a  peace  has  filled  the  hearts  of  our  sons  who  have 
so  magnificently  faced  death  for  God's  sake  and 
their  country's.  And  such  a  peace — as  I  can 
testify  from  personal  experience — fills  the  homes 
which  have  given  of  their  dearest  to  the  war  and 
may  never  see  them  return.  In  all  the  bereaved 
families  which  I  have  visited,  or  corresponded 
with,  I  have  with  one  (perhaps  two)  exceptions 
found  no  complaining  or  resentment,  far  less  any 
dismay  or  despair.  They  had  yielded  their  best 
to  the  cause  of  righteousness,  and  in  humble 
patience  and  faith  they  rested  sure  of  reunion  with 
their  dear  ones  in  God's  own  time.  In  retreat 
as  in  advance,  in  defeat  as  in  victory,  Great  Brit- 
ain has  found  the  peace  of  God — tested,  where 
Christ  said  it  was  to  be  tested,  in  great  tribula- 
tions and  found  unfailing. 


THE   UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR 


VI 

THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR^ 

Mr.  President,  Members   of   the   University   of 
Chicago,  Graduates,  and  Gradiiands : — 

It  has  been  my  privilege  and  honour  to  teach 
in  this  University  under  both  of  your  great  Presi- 
dents. I  wish  it  were  once  more  in  order  to  teach 
that  I  had  come  among  you  on  this  occasion.  But 
neither  my  present  office  in  a  sister-University  nor 
the  cruel  circumstances  of  our  times  permit  of 
that.  I  am  honoured  to  come  here  as  Principal 
and  Vice-Chancellor  of  a  sister-University,  and 
with  all  the  validity  of  that  office  I  convey  to  you 
her  greetings,  to  which  (by  the  commission  of  the 
Principals  of  the  other  three  Scottish  Universities, 

^  Delivered  on  the  occasion  of  the  One  Hundred  and 
Seventh  Convocation  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  held 
in  Hutchinson  Court,  nth  June,  1918,  under  President 
Harry  Pratt  Judson.  James  Vincent  Nash,  A.B.,  19 14, 
courteously  made  this  stenographic  record. 

135 


186  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

I  am  empowered  to  add  their  greetings  as  well — 
St.  Andrews,  Glasgow,  and  Edinburgh. 

We  congratulate  you  on  your  rapid  progress, 
on  the  solid  foundations  on  which  you  are  built, 
and  upon  the  hope,  the  ambitions,  the  prospects 
which  you  have  in  your  short  history  already  so 
worthily  earned. 

Coming  back  to  you  as  Principal  of  Aberdeen, 
I  am,  first  of  all,  of  course,  impressed  by  our  dif- 
ferences, the  differences  between  our  two  Uni- 
versities, and  these  in  many  directions.  I  come 
to  your  Western  World  from  the  most  northerly 
University  of  the  British  Empire,  and  almost  the 
farthest  north   University   in   the   whole   world. 

That  may  suggest  to  you  something  Arctic,  and 
indeed  in  Scotland  we  live  in  the  latitude  of 
Labrador,  but  thanks  to  the  heating  system  which 
your  great  continent  works  for  us  in  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  we  enjoy  a  more  equable  climate  than 
your  own,  suffering  neither  of  your  great  ex- 
tremes. In  fact,  the  summer  of  the  east  of  Scot- 
land is  pretty  much  like  the  spring  of  New  Eng- 
land, and  I  know  no  better  climate  to  do  one's 
best  work  in. 

There  are  two  other  differences  between  us. 
One,  of  course,  of  age.     We  are  just  about  400 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR    137 

years  older  than  you,  having  been  founded  in  the 
year  1494,  by  Papal  bull,  by  a  Pope  whom  I 
hardly  dare  name  in  this  gathering,  Alexander  VI, 
Alexander  Borgia,  notorious  for  his  crimes;  and 
I  believe  that  this  foundation  of  my  University 
was  the  one  good  act  which  he  was  ever  known 
to  have  performed. 

The  other  difference  Is  that,  of  course,  of  wealth 
and  size.  And  I  confess  that  on  this  visit  to 
America,  which  has  included  visits  to  many  of 
your  great  Universities,  I  have  never  entered  one, 
and  I  have  not  entered  this,  without  breaking 
anew  the  tenth  commandment. 

I  congratulate  you  on  your  wealth,  on  the  lavish- 
ness  of  your  space,  and  the  greatness  and  the 
beauty  of  your  buildings.  I  congratulate  and 
envy  you. 

But  there  is  this  to  be  said  of  us:  The  Scottish 
Universities  have  always  been  thoroughly  demo- 
cratic. Through  our  system  of  parish  schools, 
and  now  of  numerous  higher  grade  and  secondary 
schools,  we  in  Scotland  have  always  provided  a 
ladder  to  the  learned  professions,  reaching  from 
the  steps  of  the  poorest  cottage  and  croft  in  our 
land. 

The  students  of  my  own  University  are  gath- 


138  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

ered  from  every  class  of  the  people,  and  during 
the  last  few  years  some  of  the  chief  places  in  our 
entrance  bursary  competition  have  been  taken  by 
the  sons  or  daughters  of  working  men,  one  among 
them  being,  I  remember,  the  son  of  the  widow 
of  a  railway  porter. 

Before  I  begin  the  special  subject  on  which 
I  have  been  asked  to  address  you  there  are  two 
preliminary  points  on  which  I  wish  to  say  a  word 
or  two.  First  of  all,  I  want  to  remind  you  of 
the  continuity  of  University  development  in  Great 
Britain  and  America.  Have  you  ever  considered 
the  close  succession  of  your  own  Universities  to 
our  earlier  Institutions  of  learning  In  Great  Brit- 
ain? The  last  three  of  our  ancient  Universities 
— Edinburgh,  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and  Mari- 
schal  College,  Aberdeen,  with  the  full  rights  of  a 
University — were  founded  in  1583,  1591,  and 
1593,  respectively,  and  no  other  British  University 
was  founded  between  that  last  date  at  the  close 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the  foundation  of 
London  University  in  1826  and  of  Durham  in 
1832. 

But  that  great  gap  of  more  than  two  centuries 
was  amply  and  generously  filled  by  the  glorious 
succession  of  American  Universities.     Harvard, 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR    139 

your  oldest  University,  founded  In  1636,  Is  only 
forty-three  years  younger  than  the  last  of  our 
ancient  Universities;  William  and  Mary  followed 
in  1693,  Yale  In  1701,  and  between  that  date  and 
the  founding  of  London  University  there  ap- 
peared Pennsylvania,  Princeton,  Brown,  Colum- 
bia, Dartmouth,  Rutgers,  Amherst,  and  I  don't 
know  how  many  others.  You  gloriously,  as  I  say, 
filled  that  great  gap  of  ours,  and  it  has  always 
been  a  proof  to  me,  sir,  that  the  Pilgrim  Fathers, 
and  other  English,  Scottish,  and  Irish  emigrants 
who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  United  States, 
carried  away  not  only  a  great  part  of  the  soul  and 
character  of  Great  Britain  but  a  very  large  por- 
tion of  her  brains  as  well. 

The  other  point  on  which  I  wish  to  touch  Is 
this :  The  time  has  long  been  due  for  a  closer  co- 
operation between  the  Universities  of  America  and 
those  of  Great  Britain,  and  for  some  measure  of 
co-ordination  between  their  degrees.  Always  de- 
sirable, such  measures  have  at  last  become  urgent 
In  the  circumstances  created  by  the  present  war. 
They  are  rendered  Immediately  necessary  by  the 
closing  of  German  Universities,  for  a  very  long 
time  we  must  expect,  to  British  and  American  stu- 
dents; and,  to  say  the  least,  it  is  up  to  us  people  of 


140  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

America,  of  France,  and  of  Great  Britain  to  show 
that  in  this  respect  the  German  Universities  are 
not  indispensable  to  us. 

These  measures  are  rendered  all  the  easier  by 
the  new  alliance,  and  I  trust  the  lasting  alliance, 
between  our  peoples.  The  times  are  both  favour- 
able and  most  compelling  for  their  realisation. 
Practical  steps  will  be  taken  to  this  end  in  the 
course  of  the  year.  A  conference  on  the  subject, 
between  delegates  from  Britain  and  representa- 
tives of  your  Universities,  was  called  for  May  in 
New  York,  but  has  been  postponed  till  October 
or  November;  and  I  trust  that  conclusions  will 
then  be  reached  which  may  commend  themselves 
to  the  Universities  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 
The  special  problems  with  which  that  conference 
will  have  to  deal  are,  first,  the  interchange  of 
teachers,  and,  secondly,  opportunities  for  post- 
graduate studies. 

As  to  the  first,  your  experience  with  Germany 
and  France  will  be  of  great  value  to  us  of  Britain 
in  this  respect,  especially  with  regard  to  the  length 
of  the  period,  and  to  the  character,  of  the  lectures 
to  be  given  by  the  visiting  professors — whether 
they  are  to  be  short,  supplementary  courses,  or 
longer  courses  fitted  into  the  regular  curriculum  of 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR    141 

the  Universities  visited,  and  qualifying  for  their 
degrees. 

With  regard  to  the  second  point,  opportunities 
for  postgraduate  studies,  the  chief  problem  that 
lies  before  us  is  the  provision  of  suitable  degrees 
in  recognition  of  postgraduate  work.  I  emphasise 
this  as  postgraduate  work,  for  I  think  it  would  be 
detrimental  to  the  national  interests  of  any  of 
our  three  peoples  if  it  sent  its  undergraduates  out 
of  their  own  country.  It  is  during  undergraduate 
years  that  the  national  spirit  and  the  capacities  for 
proving  proper  citizens  of  one  of  the  great  nations 
ripen  and  are  most  developed  and  most  easily 
trained,  and  I  would  deprecate,  from  our  experi- 
ence of  the  presence  of  Indian  students  in  Great 
Britain  during  their  undergraduate  years,  the  ex- 
change among  us  of  undergraduate  students. 

But  we  all  want  to  see  the  postgraduate  stu- 
dents of  all  three  peoples  taking  advantage  of  the 
opportunities  of  research  and  the  fresh  aspects 
of  teaching  which  are  possible  to  them,  by  passing 
from  one  set  of  our  national  Universities  to  the 
other. 

Now,  on  all  these  points  I  offer  no  further 
opinion.  At  present  it  is  enough  to  assure  you, 
and   I   do   so  heartily,  that   in  the   British   Uni- 


142  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

versities  to-day  there  exists  a  very  strong  desire 
for  an  effective  collaboration  with  the  Universities 
of  France  and  the  Universities  of  the  United 
States,  The  various  Universities  in  my  country 
are  applying  their  minds,  and  have  been  applying 
them  for  some  time,  to  the  discussion  of  details; 
and  I  ought  to  warn  you  of  the  appearance  al- 
ready of  a  considerable  variety  of  opinion. 

I  now  come  to  my  proper  tale  this  afternoon, 
"The  Universities  and  the  War."  I  asked 
President  Judson  to  make  the  title  general,  be- 
cause I  want  before  I  close  to  say  something  about 
the  Universities  of  France  and  their  contribution 
to  the  war  as  well  as  about  that  of  those  of  my 
own  country. 

I  believe  that  no  institutions  of  modern  society, 
not  even  the  churches,  have  been  more  powerfully 
affected  by  the  war  than  the  Universities  of  all  the 
belligerent  countries.  They  have  contributed, 
among  the  Allies,  to  the  understanding  of  the 
great  issues;  they  have  swelled,  more  than  most 
institutions  and  I  believe  in  a  degree  equal  to  the 
churches,  the  volume  of  that  national  conscience 
which  is  our  chief  and  our  lasting  power  in  fighting 
for  a  cause  so  just  and  so  sacred.  Above  all,  they 
have  sent  lavishly  of  their  men,  both  teachers  and 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR   143 

taught,  both  students  and  graduates,  to  the  forces 
of  the  Allies;  and  they  have  contributed,  in  full 
proportion  to  their  number,  to  the  colossal  sacri- 
fices which  the  manhood  of  their  nations  has  made 
to  the  most  sacred  cause  ever  fought  for  in  the 
whole  range  of  human  history. 

We  have  had  in  Britain,  not  a  perfect,  but  a 
very  considerable  organisation  for  public  educa- 
tion in  the  meaning  of  the  war,  both  morally  and 
politically;  and  naturally  the  staffs  of  our  Uni- 
versities have  been  called  upon  to  contribute  to 
this  propaganda,  as  well  as  to  the  great  campaign 
so  successfully  conducted  from  one  end  of  my  land 
to  the  other,  in  the  interests  of  recruiting,  while 
the  volunteer  system  of  enlistment  still  prevailed 
among  us. 

Now,  I  need  hardly  say  to  you  who  have  al- 
ready, in  your  year  of  warfare,  done  so  much  in 
this  direction,  that  our  laboratories  and  their 
staffs  have  been  occupied  in  the  researches  and 
manufactures  connected  with  munitions  and  ord- 
nance, with  the  prevention  of  disease  among  the 
troops,  with  the  development  and  economy  of 
food  supplies,  with  the  supply  of  new  fertilisers, 
with  assisting  new  or  revived  industries,  many  of 
which  had  been  virtually  monopolised  by  the  Ger- 


144.  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

man  people;  in  researches  leading  to  the  manu- 
facture of  glass,  textile  fabrics,  army  cloths,  aero- 
plane fabrics,  dyestuflfs  and  drugs,  of  the  last  of 
which  we  had  in  our  country,  owing  to  the  lack  of 
foresight,  a  very  inadequate  supply. 

Some  University  buildings  have  been  turned,  as 
with  you,  into  hospitals,  others  into  training 
schools,  others  into  barracks  for  cadets.  Others 
have  become  workrooms  for  volunteer  service  in 
the  production  of  war  dressings  and  hospital  gar- 
ments. 

Time  does  not  permit  me  to  furnish  you  with 
details  under  each  of  these  heads,  but  I  may  say, 
by  way  of  illustration  of  the  last,  that  in  Aberdeen 
University,  in  eighteen  months,  our  University 
Women's  War  Work  Association  completed  15,- 
400  hospital  dressings  and  comforts  and  over 
257,000  war  dressings  for  military  and  Red  Cross 
hospitals  and  ambulances.  I  haven't  the  figures 
for  the  last  year,  but  I  confidently  believe  that  by 
this  time  the  figures  I  have  given  you  have  been 
doubled. 

The  engineering  departments  in  several  Uni- 
versities have  been  handed  over  to  the  Admiralty 
or  the  Ministry  of  Munitions  for  steel  testing  and 
other  purposes.     In  other  departments  assistance 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR   145 

has  been  given  to  His  Majesty's  forces  in  meteor- 
ology and  other  sciences  connected  with  aviation, 
in  methods  for  detecting  submarines,  and  mat- 
ters connected  with  transport  and  embarkation, 
and  countless  other  purposes  of  the  war.  And  all 
this  in  addition  to  the  fact  that,  though  our  num- 
bers have  been  reduced,  and  some  of  our  courses 
shortened,  and  a  large  proportion  of  our  staffs 
are  absent  on  whole-time  service  for  the  war,  the 
regular  work  of  the  Universities  has  been  gen- 
erally sustained  from  first  to  last  through  the  four 
years  of  our  strenuous  and  bitter  fighting. 

I  may  say  again,  just  as  a  point  in  illustration, 
that  out  of  the  hundred  or  so  members  of  the 
teaching  staff  of  my  own  University  no  fewer  than 
thirty-one  are  giving  whole-time  service  either  to 
the  Army  or  to  the  Navy,  while  about  twenty  or 
thirty  others  are  giving  half-time  service — half 
to  the  University  and  half  for  war  purposes. 

I  come  now  to  the  numbers  of  our  men  stu- 
dents and  graduates  who  have  enlisted  or  been 
commissioned  for  direct  war  service.  Generally 
speaking,  I  may  say  that  while  the  volunteer  sys- 
tem of  service  prevailed  the  students  of  our  Uni- 
versities were  reduced  in  most  cases  to  one-third 
of  their  former  number,  in  many  cases  to  one- 


146  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

fourth,  nearly  so  in  Aberdeen,  but  in  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  I  believe  to  nearly  one-tenth  of  their 
former  number.  That  was,  of  course,  because 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  receive  students  at  a 
higher  age,  nearer  the  military  age,  than  the  rest 
of  us  do. 

The  response  of  University  graduates  within 
military  age  was  practically  as  full  as  that  of  our 
students.  In  Aberdeen,  for  instance,  we  have  a 
list  of  graduates,  men  and  women,  of  over  5000, 
all  told.  On  the  fifteenth  of  February,  this  year, 
1750  of  these  were  on  naval  or  military  service — 
practically  every  man  who  was  of  military  age 
and  could  be  spared  from  the  practice  of  his  civil 
profession. 

Among  them  all,  it  may  be  of  interest  to  you  to 
know  that  I  have  found  only  four  ultra-pacifists 
and  conscientious  objectors. 

Taking  graduates  and  undergraduates  to- 
gether, by  the  beginning  of  19 17,  when  almost  all 
who  served  were  still  volunteers,  the  following  are 
the  most  notable  of  the  numbers  contributed  by 
the  Universities:  Oxford  by  that  time  had  sent 
10,688  men  to  the  colours;  Cambridge  had  sent 
13,128;  London  University  had  sent  over  20,000. 

Take,    again,   the    four   Scottish   Universities: 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR   147 

Edinburgh — and  these  numbers  are  correct  up  to 
the  middle  of  February  last,  a  somewhat  later 
date — had  sent  something  over  5000;  Glasgow, 
3222;  Aberdeen,   2645;  and  St.  Andrews,  742. 

I  come  now  to  the  gravest  part  of  my  story — 
the  tale  of  the  sacrifices  of  the  Universities  for 
our  common  cause,  the  number  of  their  members 
who  have  been  killed  in  action,  who  have  died  of 
wounds  or  disease,  or  who  have  gone  down  with 
their  ships.  At  the  beginning  of  1917  Oxford 
had  lost  141 2  of  its  men,  and  I  expect  by  this 
time  that  the  number  is  over  2000;  Cambridge 
had  lost  1405.  At  the  beginning  of  this  year  the 
fallen  of  Glasgow  University  were  472;  of  Edin- 
burgh, nearly  450;  of  my  own  University,  nearly 
250;  and  of  St.  Andrews,  86,  making  for  the 
Scottish  Universities  a  total  of  ov^er  1250  out  of 
11,000  of  their  men  on  service,  not  all  of  whom 
had  reached  the  front. 

Now,  I  wish  to  tell  you,  as  I  can  from  my  ex- 
perience as  Principal  of  Aberdeen  University, 
who  have  been  privileged  to  enter  by  correspond- 
ence or  sometimes  in  person,  over  200  of  the 
families  of  those  nearly  250  of  our  fallen,  that 
except  in  one  or  two  cases  I  never  found  any  mur- 
muring;  far  less   despair   or  dismay  or   resent- 


148  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

ment  towards  God  at  the  great  sacrifices  which 
they  had  been  called  to  pay,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
everywhere  a  resignation  to  it  and  pride  in  the 
fact  that  their  sons  had  been  called  to  fight  and 
to  suffer  for  the  sacred  Cause,  as  they  believed, 
of  their  country  and  their  God;  and,  in  the  power 
of  that,  everywhere  a  humble  hope  of  reunion  with 
those  whose  deaths  in  such  a  faith,  for  such  a 
Cause,  they  could  not  but  regard  as  entrances 
upon  a  higher  and  a  nobler  service  above. 

I  want  to  devote,  for  I  feel  we  have  a  great 
debt  in  the  matter,  a  few  words,  before  I  sit 
down,  to  the  University  of  France.  I  shall  best 
bring  this  before  you  by  reminding  you  that  before 
this  Great  War  broke  out  there  was  no  people,  no 
civilised  people,  on  the  face  of  the  earth  so  broken, 
split,  and  fissured  as  the  people  of  France;  split 
from  top  to  bottom  by  the  greatest  of  all  schisms, 
the  religious;  and  broken,  more  than  any  other 
political  unity  in  the  world,  into  groups,  parties, 
and  factions. 

What  do  we  now  see?  What  did  we  see  be- 
fore two  years  of  the  war  were  over  but  that  split 
and  fissured  people  united  again  and  as  compact 
and  as  concentrated  upon  the  moral  issues  and 
aims  of  this  war  as  either  the  British  people  or 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR   149 

now  the  people  of  the  United  States.  What  had 
worked  this  miracle?  The  Rector  of  the  Acad- 
emy of  Bordeaux  tells  us  what  it  was  that  worked 
the  miracle.  In  his  interesting  book,  "L'Univer- 
site  et  la  Guerre,"  he  shows  that  it  was  not  merely 
the  physical  pressure  of  self-defence,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  a  common  devotion  which  bound  all 
parties,  communions,  factions,  and  sects  alike  in 
dedication  to  the  spiritual  ideals  which  the  war 
revealed. 

•  ••••••• 

[Here  followed  a  summary  of  what  I  have 
given  in  the  address  on  "The  Witness  of  France," 
now  No.  IV  in  this  volume.] 

Now,  I  have  delayed  you  too  long,  but  I  want 
to  close  (being  a  minister  and  unable  to  help  it) 
with  a  practical  application.  And  for  this  purpose 
I  must  go  back  to  what  I  told  you  of  the  awful  toll 
of  our  sacrifices.  As  I  said  the  other  day  in  this 
University,  I  come  to  you  from  a  people  that  have 
drunk  to  the  dregs  the  cup  of  the  agony  of  war 
for  the  last  four  years.  But  whatever  the  destruc- 
tion, whatever  the  sufferings,  whatever  the  sacri- 
fices we  have  endured  these  four  years,  my  mes- 
sage from  my  people  to  the  American  people  is 
that  that  conscience  with  which  we  began  the  war 


160  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

is  as  strong  as  ever  it  was;  our  faith  in  the  justice 
of  our  Cause  and  our  determination  to  see  it, 
with  our  Allies,  through  to  its  inevitable  victory, 
have  not  failed  us  and  will  not  fail  us. 

We  who  are  older,  and  some  of  us  much  older, 
than  those  who  have  fallen  in  their  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands,  in  my  country  and  in  France — 
for  remember  the  worst  of  war  is  that  it  falls 
most  heavily  on  the  younger  men — recognise  the 
debt  of  our  age  to  the  youth  of  our  nation,  and 
feel  an  added  duty  toward  their  ideals.  To  the 
inspiration  we  have  drawn  from  their  courage 
as  individuals  we  are  trying  to  add  this  care — 
that  the  visions  and  the  enthusiasms  of  our  sons 
do  not  suffer  from  this  desperate  thinning  of  their 
ranks  across  the  whole  of  Europe;  that  more  than 
ever  we  control  the  accumulating  prejudice  of 
our  years,  our  growing  contentment  with  things 
as  they  are;  that  we  husband  such  force  and  fresh- 
ness as  remain  to  ourselves  and  continue,  along- 
side the  young  men  who  may  be  left  to  us,  to  play 
our  diminishing  part  with  unabated  zest  and 
courage. 

But  on  you,  my  younger  friends,  who  are  the 
contemporaries  of  those  young  martyrs  who  have 
fallen  in  their  tens  of  thousands  in  Europe  and  to 


THE  UNIVERSITIES  AND  THE  WAR   151 

whose  great  army  your  youth  have  begun  to  add 
(God  grant  It  may  not  be  so  great  a  number,  but 
it  sometimes  looks  like  it) — on  you,  who  are 
either  their  contemporaries  or  just  behind  them, 
there  has  fallen  an  obligation  heavier  than  per- 
haps was  ever  felt  by  any  generation  of  youth  in 
all  the  history  of  your  people. 

In  those  whom  it  is  most  natural  for  you  to 
follow  you  have  a  wealth  of  example  that  should 
control  and  inspire  you  throughout  your  lives. 
See  that  you  cherish  to  the  end  the  value  of 
spiritual  ideals,  both  for  man  and  for  nation,  and 
without  flinching  face  the  full  cost  of  your  duty 
to  such  ideals,  in  life  and  in  death,  in  ways  that 
may  show  no  heroism,  but  need  no  less  virtue  and 
toil.  See  that  you  practise  that  faithfulness  in 
service,  and  in  sacrifice  to  which  those  heroes  have 
risen.  Accept  discipline  as  patiently  as  they  did. 
Accept  discipline — that  is  the  foundation  of  all 
heroism,  of  all  really  good  service  to  our  fellow- 
men,  and  the  first  condition  of  a  noble  sacrifice. 
Be  careful  for  details  in  the  routine  of  your  life, 
but  be  equally  ready  for  life's  emergencies.  Never 
grudge  the  call  to  extra  work  nor  shrink  from  any 
danger  that  may  spring  upon  your  way  to  it.  Ever 
keep  back  from  uttering  any  selfish  remonstrance 


152  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

at  the  Inequalities  of  reward  or  fortune,  some- 
times as  great  in  peace  as  they  are  startlingly  so  in 
time  of  war.  If  you  thus  train  yourself  in  the 
work  of  ordinary  days  and  in  answer  to  God's 
more  urgent  calls,  you  shall  be  able  to  make  the 
last  resignation  of  life  itself  in  humble  hope  and 
peace. 

Friends,  disasters  may  await  us  as  peoples  and 
as  armies;  troubles,  sacrifices,  and  suffering 
greater  than  any  we  have  yet  experienced  may  fall 
upon  us.  Let  us  remember  those  who  have  suf- 
fered, who  have  fought,  and  who  have  died  for 
us,  and  rekindle  the  flickering  flame  of  our  cour- 
age at  the  imperishable  fire  of  their  devotion. 


SOME  RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE 
WAR 


VII 

SOME  RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE 
WARi 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  speak  on  the  Religious 
Effects  of  the  War.  I  do  so  with  great  hesitation, 
because  my  experience  is  limited,  because  there  is 
much  contradiction  in  the  testimony  of  those 
whose  knowledge  Is  both  wider  and  more  intimate 
than  my  own,  and  because  It  will  not  be  possible 
for  anyone  to  form  a  just  estimate  of  the  religious 
effects  of  the  war,  till  our  soldiers  have  returned 
to  civil  life  and  till,  Indeed,  we  see  how  our  whole 
people  bear  themselves  when  these  calamities  have 
overpassed.  At  least,  keep  In  mind  that  what  I 
say  Is  but  the  saying  of  one  man;  and  that  one 
man,  however  wide  his  experience,  cannot  speak 
in  matters  of  religion  for  a  whole  nation. 

^  This  Address  was  delivered  in  various  forms  to  sev- 
eral meetings  of  local  Federations  of  Ministers,  Min- 
isters' Clubs  and  gatherings  of  Churchmen  and  Church- 
women  in  different  parts  of  the  United  States. 

155 


156  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 


In  other  addresses  I  have  alluded  to  the  general 
effect  on  Christian  faith  of  the  outbreak  of  the 
war,  with  all  that  it  threatened  from  the  first.^ 
I  go  Into  that  more  fully  now. 

The  outbreak  of  such  a  war  could  not  but 
shock  the  faith  of  many  Christians.  Not  only 
did  It  rend  Christendom  asunder,  and  seem  to 
spell  the  failure  of  religious  forces  which  had  been 
at  work  in  Europe  for  nineteen  centuries;  but  in 
the  professed  motives  of  those  who  were  alone 
responsible  for  starting  It,  and  In  their  measures 
for  its  conduct,  the  war  exposed  a  moral  reckless- 
ness and  malignity  more  awful  than  faith  had  ever 
encountered.  Germans  proclaimed  Might  as 
Right,  they  exalted  the  State  as  superior  to  moral- 
ity, they  enforced  the  duty  of  a  strong  state  to 
develop  its  strength  by  war,  if  necessary,  but  in 
any  case  irrespective  of  the  rights  of  weaker  states; 
and  they  not  only  announced  a  policy  of  "fright- 
fulness"  but  they  have  carried  this  out  in  a  train 
of  atrocities  on  sea  and  land,  more  dreadful — 
because  applied  with  all  the  resources  of  modern 
^  See  above,  pp.  43-45,  no,  118. 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR   157 

science — than  the  world  had  ever  seen.  The 
minds  of  men  staggered  before  this  conspiracy  of 
brute  force  and  remorseless  intellect  against  the 
common  moralities,  and  trembled  at  the  possibility 
of  its  triumph.  In  such  a  crisis,  in  face  of  the 
awful  purposes  and  powers  of  evil  exposed  by 
Germany's  assault  on  law  and  liberty  as  a  whole, 
mere  talk  about  the  failure  of  the  churches  seemed 
small  and  irrelevant.  There  was  just  as  little  use 
in  lamenting  the  frustration  of  the  recent  efforts 
of  statesmen  (partly  inspired  by  the  churches) 
to  submit  all  international  quarrels  to  arbitration.^ 
Things  greater  and  more  fundamental  were  at 
stake.  The  sovereignty  of  God  Himself  was  chal- 
lenged. The  moral  universe  seemed  shaken  to 
its  basis.  And  something  nearer  home  than  the 
crimes  of  our  enemies  startled  us.  We  were 
haunted  by  a  deep  sense  of  our  own  unfitness  for 
such  a  crisis.  Were  we  worthy  to  have  faith 
at  all? 

^  The  origins  and  progress  of  the  war  also  proved  the 
futility  of  the  easy  arguments,  based  on  purely  material 
grounds,  that  war  was  becoming  a  less  possible  event  and 
if  started  could  not  endure  beyond  a  few  months,  because 
of  the  terrible  costs  and  sacrifices  involved  by  the  modern 
scientific  conduct  of  it. 


158  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

What  was  it  that  rallied  us? 

You  remember  that  scene  in  the  Temple,  when 
the  prophet  suddenly  felt  his  vision  of  the  Near- 
ness and  the  Majesty  of  God  blotted  out;  when 
the  House  filled  with  smoke,  the  thresholds  were 
moved  and  there  came  upon  him  the  sense  of  his 
own  and  his  people's  sin;  yet  at  that  moment  the 
seraph  flew  with  a  live  coal  from  the  Altar  to  his 
lips,  a  mission  was  proclaimed,  and  he  sprang  at 
once  to  fulfil  it.  So,  in  part  at  least,  was  it  with 
us  four  years  ago.  The  smoke  of  war  swept 
between  our  hearts  and  the  throne  of  God,  our 
world  shook  around  us,  and  nothing  articulate 
seemed  left  save  a  sense  of  our  guilty  weakness. 
Yet  through  all  that  darkness  and  confusion  im- 
mediate duty  flashed,  clear,  firm  and  inevitable. 
The  conscience  of  our  people — ^the  conscience  not 
of  this  nor  that  great  man  nor  of  a  few,  but  of  our 
people  and  of  our  race,  vocal  to  the  farthest 
bounds  of  the  world  without  need  of  prophet  or 
interpreter — answered,  as  with  the  lips  of  one 
man,  to  what  we  felt  to  be  the  call  of  God. 

I  have  qualified  the  analogy  I  have  drawn; 
because  you  will  ask,  where  with  us  was  the  assur- 
ance which  came  to  the  prophet  that  his  and  his 
people's  iniquity  was  taken  away  and  their  sin 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR   159 

purged?  My  answer  Is,  that,  though  the  gospel 
of  forgiveness  may  not  have  been  articulated  to 
our  minds  as  it  was  to  the  prophet's,  a  strong 
measure  of  the  moral  force  of  forgiveness  came 
upon  us  in  the  very  fact  of  so  signal  a  call  to  duty. 
In  the  Divine  forgiveness  there  is  nothing  more 
cleansing,  nothing  more  uplifting  than  the  assur- 
ance it  brings,  that  God  trusts  us  once  again,  in 
spite  of  ourselves  and  of  our  past,  with  duty  and 
service  In  His  Kingdom.  Such  a  trust  took  pos- 
session of  us.  Unworthy  and  unprepared,  we 
were  called  to  defend  the  right,  to  succour  the 
oppressed,  to  battle  for  justice  and  freedom;  and 
our  Immediate  instincts  of  this  became  daily  more 
clear  through  our  further  discoveries  of  the  aims 
and  conduct  of  our  foes.  This  conscience  of  a 
trust  has  been  with  us  all  along.  Our  statesmen 
have  defined  its  fulfilment  as  our  main  and  prin- 
cipal aim  In  fighting;  our  self-defence  and  the 
security  of  our  empire  being  only  the  necessary 
means  for  fulfilling  It. 

Thus,  as  so  often  In  the  experience  of  men, 
faith,  confused  and  stunned,  was  rallied  first  of  all 
upon  conscience  and  the  clear  call  of  duty. 


160  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 


Time  brought  us,  or  at  least  some  of  us,  these 
further  reflections.  When  people  asked,  as  cer- 
tain kept  asking,  did  not  such  a  war  mean  the 
destruction  of  faith,  "the  collapse  of  Christianity" 
as  their  panic  phrased  it,  we  remembered  that 
man's  trust  in  the  Most  High  had  passed  through 
trials  as  fiery  as  this,  even  some  in  which  the 
powers  of  righteousness  seemed  for  the  time  com- 
pletely overwhelmed;  yet  these  trials  proved  not 
fatal  to  faith  but  corrective  and  the  discipline  to  a 
more  thorough  theology.  Above  all  we  remem- 
bered that  it  was  in  periods  not  only  of  war,  but 
of  wars  closely  resembling  the  present  in  their 
conditions  and  issues,  that  the  Hebrew  prophets 
both  laid  the  foundations  on  which  our  faith  still 
rests,  and  descried,  though  far  off,  the  full  out- 
lines of  its  promise  and  assurance.  When  Assyria 
and  Babylon  successively  sought  the  conquest  of 
the  world  in  a  spirit  like  that  of  Germany  to-day; 
when,  boasting  their  superior  culture,  they  claimed 
the  right  to  impose  it  by  force  of  arms  on  other 
peoples;  when  they  denied  the  claims  of  the 
smaller  nations  to  a  separate  existence;  when  they 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR   161 

marched  their  armies  forth,  as  the  Kaiser  marched 
his,  in  the  name  of  a  sheerly  national  god;  when 
they  avowed  a  policy  of  "frightfulness,"  and  car- 
ried this  out  with  massacres  and  deportations  of 
civilians,  as  Germany  has  done,^  and  when  they 
achieved  their  ends  and  did  conquer  the  world — 
it  was  even  then  (as  we  remembered)  that  the 
profoundest  thoughts  of  God's  nature  and  will 
were  formed  in  His  prophets'  minds,  and  the 
widest  visions  of  His  Providence  opened  to  their 
eyes.  It  was  amid  such  experiences  that  they 
laid  down  those  truths  of  the  Sovereignty  of  God, 
of  His  Righteousness  and  inevitable  Law,  of  His 

^  A  study  of  the  works  of  the  younger  Delitzsch, 
Winckler,  and  other  German  Assyriologists  reveals  many 
resemblances  between  the  modern  German  spirit  and  the 
spirit  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  which  they  have  done  so 
much  to  interpret  to  their  people.  There  are  the  same 
confidence  in  sheer  magnitude  and  incapacity  to  appre- 
ciate spiritual  values,  the  same  beliefs  that  small  peoples 
have  no  inherent  powers  of  culture,  and  that  everything 
worthy  in  the  history  of  man  is  the  offspring  only  of 
the  immemorially  trained  and  organised  intellect  of  some 
great  world-power;  the  same  symptoms  of  megalomania 
— the  tendency  to  overlook  or  distort  facts  and  the  want 
of  humour.  These  observations  are  not  the  result  of  the 
war.     I  published  them  in  January,  1907. 


162  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

equal  regard  for  all  the  nations  of  mankind,  and 
of  history  as  the  tribunal  of  His  Justice,  on  which 
truths  our  faith  still  rests  as  its  deepest  founda- 
tions. And  we  told  ourselves  that  the  recurrence 
of  experiences,  out  of  which  had  been  born  the 
strongest  faith  men  have  found,  surely  could  not 
be  fatal  to  faith  now;  that,  as  Israel  had,  we 
might  find  in  it  not  the  overthrow  but  the  dis- 
cipline and  enlargement  of  our  faith. 

I  think  that  on  the  whole  this  has  proved  to 
be  the  case.  The  war  indeed  has  been  fatal  to 
many  forms  of  faith,  partial,  facile  and  selfish 
forms,  and  for  that  we  can  only  be  thankful.  But 
we  have  felt  it — I  know  I  speak  for  many — to 
correct,  purify,  widen  and  re-establish  our  knowl- 
edge of  God,  and  that  in  several  directions. 

I  have  spoken  of  partial  and  selfish  forms  of 
faith.  In  the  softness  of  mind  bred  by  our  com- 
fortable civilisation,  we  religious  people  had 
grown  to  be  content  with  easy  views  of  God  as 
a  God  of  Love  and  Peace  and  not  of  Truth  and 
Law  as  well,  the  foundations  of  Whose  throne 
are  justice  and  judgment;  Who  spared  not  His 
own  Son  against  the  evil  of  the  world;  and  Who, 
even,  when  He  pardons  and  trusts  them  once  more 
with  His  Service,  exacts  both  from  nations  and 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR   163 

individuals  the  consequences  not  only  of  their 
presumptuous  sins,  but  of  all  their  slackness,  in- 
dolence, and  neglect  of  His  laws,  whether  in  the 
natural  or  in  the  moral  sphere.  Accepting  Christ 
as  our  Priest  we  had  failed  to  follow  Him  as  our 
Prophet  and  our  King;  we  had  selfishly  tended 
to  use  Him  as  our  Peace  without  obeying  Him  as 
our  Conscience.  We  had  rested  in  the  comfort  of 
our  Lord's  teaching,  and  had  forgotten  its  rigours. 
Or  we  had  been  satisfied  with  being  warned  off 
the  grosser  vices;  and  had  ignored,  how,  for  in- 
stance in  His  Parables,  our  Lord's  judgments  are 
less  frequent  against  sins  of  passion  and  excess 
than  against  sins  of  neglect  and  indolence — want 
of  watching,  leaving  talents  to  rust,  unfaithfulness 
in  little  things,  lack  of  foresight  and  prudence — all 
the  sins  of  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin,  with 
easy  thoughts  of  God  and  cheap  views  of  our 
fellow-men. 

Now  the  war  has  at  least  brought  us  back  to  all 
this,  has  exposed  our  partial  thinking  about  God, 
our  grudging  measures  of  each  other,  our  indif- 
ference and  guilty  inefficiency — the  unthorough- 
ness  both  of  our  faith  and  of  our  service — and  has 
reminded  us  of  how  offensive  these  are  and  cer- 
tain of  the  Divine  judgments.     If  with  any  it  has 


164  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

failed  to  do  so,  they  have  missed  the  power  we 
shall  all  need  for  the  even  greater  problems  and 
tasks  which  await  us  in  the  re-organisation  of  our 
life  when  the  war  is  over. 


Objections  have  been  raised  to  the  many  calls  to 
Repent,  which  the  Churches  have  addressed 
throughout  the  war  to  themselves  and  the  Nation. 
But  these  objections  are  due  to  ignorance  of  what 
Repentance  means.  Repentance  is  of  an  infinite 
fertility  in  life.  History  testifies  to  its  indis- 
pensableness  in  liberating  the  finest  energies  of 
our  nature.  Even  Gibbon  acknowledges  the  sin- 
cere and  powerful  impulse  which  the  early  Church 
gave  to  human  progress  by  awakening  this  primal 
ethical  passion  among  men.  Repentance  is  the 
womb  of  forces  both  moral  and  intellectual,  as  its 
New  Testament  name  implies.  It  brings  a  clearer 
and  a  further  vision;  it  disposes  to  sympathy  and 
therefore  leads  to  a  juster  knowledge  of  our  fel- 
low-men; in  these  days  of  war  it  is  well  to  remind 
ourselves  that  it  makes  us  readier  to  forgive  our 
enemies  by  discovering  how  much  we  share  the 
guilty  tempers  we  abhor  in  them.     It  cleanses  the 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR   165 

mind  to  an  increase  of  the  mind's  capacity  and 
grip;  and  while  it  enfranchises,  at  the  same  time 
it  concentrates,  the  will,  under  the  grateful 
urgency  of  a  heavy  debt  both  to  God  and  man. 
As  St.  Paul  said  to  the  Corinthians :  what  earnest 
care  it  wrought  in  you,  yea  what  clearing  of  your- 
selves, yea  what  fear,  yea  what  longing,  yea  what 
zeal,  yea  what  avenging!  Repentance  is  not  a 
passion  only.  It  is  an  energy  and  the  liberator 
of  energies:  the  redeemer,  in  the  first  place,  of 
conscience,  and  that  works  both  ways  (as  with 
the  Corinthians),  for  besides  producing  in  men 
conviction  of  their  own  sins,  it  gives  them  a  firmer 
sense  of  any  justice  which  may  be  inherent  in  their 
cause — what  clearing  of  yourselves — and  there- 
fore courage  to  stand  upon  it,  and  strength  to  op- 
pose the  wrong.  So  repentance  begets  an  energy 
and  enthusiasm  of  service,  and  even  of  righteous 
war — yea  what  zeal,  yea  what  avenging! 

All  this  is  true  not  only  of  individuals  but  of 
nations.  Our  Puritan  fathers,  in  time  of  war 
or  other  calamity,  like  the  Prophets,  always  called 
to  a  national  repentance;  and  in  times  of  peace 
men  like  Wilberforce,  Chalmers,  and  Shaftesbury 
in  my  country  have  done  the  same  in  preparation 
for  the  reforms  they  led.     But  it  has  not  only  been 


166  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

the  evangelicals  who  have  roused  this  primal 
passion  of  morality.  I  have  mentioned  Gibbon's 
testimony  to  its  worth.  Take  also  Edmund  Burke. 
He  does  not  use  the  word  repentance,  but  the 
shame  which  he  bends  his  eloquence  to  stir  in  his 
people  for  their  political  and  social  sins,  is  of  the 
same  ethical  quality. 

The  war  has  roused  us  to  our  need  of  this 
repentance.  I  do  not  say  our  whole  people,  for 
as  history  shows  a  national  repentance  is  always 
more  or  less  vicarious,  but  all  our  spiritual  and 
earnest  minds.  Whatever  their  other  failings, 
our  Churches  have  at  least  been  true  to  this  first 
demand  of  their  Lord,  and  have  not  only  pro- 
claimed it,  but,  for  themselves  and  with  many 
beyond  their  membership,  have  fulfilled  it.  And 
first  for  our  national  sins  of  commission — the 
selfishness  of  our  classes  and  their  interests,  our 
factiousness,  the  obstinacy  of  our  prejudices  and 
disposition  to  quarrel  over  lesser  things  to  the 
sacrifice  of  the  greater  and  more  urgent,  our  love 
of  money,  greed  and  wide  intemperance;  as  well 
as,  in  particular,  the  tolerance  shown  even  by 
religious  people  to  unworthy  tendencies  in  art  and 
journalism — our  criminal  transgression  of  the 
apostolic  warning,  not  to  be  partakers  of  other 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR   167 

men's  sins.  But  still  more  has  the  war  exposed 
to  us  our  need  to  repent  of  the  partial  and  selfish 
faith  of  which  I  have  spoken,  of  the  carelessness 
and  waste  in  our  public  and  private  yfe,  of  sloven- 
liness in  thinking  as  well  as  in  doing,  of  our 
notorious  contempt  of  discipline,  both  physical 
and  moral,  of  our  want  of  watching  and  unfaith- 
fulness in  the  little  trusts  of  life. 


In  another  address*  I  have  spoken  of  the  serv- 
ice of  the  War  in  clearing  up  our  thoughts  about 
Peace.  It  has  proved  to  us  the  constant  teaching 
of  the  Bible,  that  Peace  is  no  primary  blessing  or 
duty  which  can  be  sought  or  achieved  in  disregard 
to  other  duties,  or  may  be  preferred  before  them; 
but  is  always  and  only  the  fruit  of  truth,  justice 
and  the  conquest  of  evil,  which  are  precedent  and 
necessary  to  it,  and  must  be  striven  for,  at  what- 
ever cost,  if  peace  is  to  be  clean  and  enduring. 
The  war  has  bitterly  taught  us  to  distinguish  be- 
tween merely  political  peace,  with  Its  Inestimable 
benefits,  and  the  inward  peace  promised  by  Christ 
to  the  doing  of  God's  will,  a  good  conscience,  the 
^  V.  Peace — False  and  True. 


168  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

brave  acceptance  of  duty,  and  sacrifice  nobly 
borne — the  peace  which  not  only  endures  in  spite 
of  war  but  may  find  in  war  its  temporary  yet  in- 
evitable instrument. 

By  this  and  other  ways  the  war  has  brought  us 
very  near  the  Cross,  and  renewed  those  supreme 
lessons  of  life  of  which  the  Cross  is  the  eternal 
symbol.  We  had  been  forgetting  that  the  end  of 
sin  is  tragedy  and  death.  We  had  been  forget- 
ting that  all  the  evils  which  sin  breeds  require  for 
their  overthrow  the  uttermost  men  can  give,  that 
they  are  to  be  defeated  only  by  the  sacrifice  of 
what  we  hold  dearest,  even  life  itself — that  there 
are  powers  and  purposes  of  evil  which  can  be  en- 
countered in  no  other  way  than  by  resistance  unto 
blood.  This  war  has  brought  us  again  face  to 
face  with  the  stern  facts. 

The  truth  that  such  sacrifice  is  mainly  vicarious, 
the  suffering  by  men  for  sins  not  their  own,  and 
for  the  peace  and  freedom  of  others  than  them- 
selves, has  also  been  brought  home  to  our  hearts 
with  the  keenest  pangs  that  men  and  women  can 
feel.  But  that  truth  is  no  more  than  what  runs 
through  all  the  history  of  the  human  family  on 
earth,  and  finds  its  most  signal  proof  in  the  Cross 
of   Christ.     The   moral   value    and   influence   of 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR  169 

sacrifice  lie  in  Its  vlcarlousness.  That  this  quality 
and  this  moral  effect,  of  what  they  do  and  suffer, 
have  been  present  to  multitudes  of  our  young 
soldiers  and  have  inspired  them,  we  have  abundant 
proof.  In  another  address^  I  have  quoted  the 
avowals  of  this  truth  by  a  number  of  Frenchmen 
on  the  fighting  front.  And  these  speak  not  for 
themselves  only  but  for  hosts  of  our  more  reticent 
British  martyrs.  What  has  sustained  and  stimu- 
lated them  in  a  warfare  they  detest,  has  been 
the  thought  that  they  fought  and  died  not  for 
themselves  or  their  own  salvation,  nor  even  for 
their  country  alone  and  their  homes,  but  for  a 
better  future  for  the  whole  race  - — that  the  gen- 
erations to  come  might  never  suffer  from  the  hor- 
rors which  have  accumulated  upon  our  own — that 
once  for  all  the  arrogance  and  Impiety  which  had 
caused  these  might  be  overthrown.  We  know  that 
this  is  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  His  Cross. 

But  besides  bringing  us  thus  Into  the  fellowship 
of  Christ's  sufferings  God  has  not  left  us  In  this 
war  without  the  power  of  His  resurrection.     I 

^  IV.  The  Witness  of  France. 

^  See  especially  pp.  99-101,  106-109. 


170  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

have  had  occasion  to  speak  of  this  also  in  other 
addresses,^  and  I  speak  of  what  I  know.  I  have 
seen  or  have  corresponded  with  the  families  of 
students  and  graduates  of  my  own  University  who 
have  fallen  in  the  war.  And  as  Moderator  of 
my  Church  I  have  had  to  visit  several  provinces 
of  Scotland,  particularly  the  northern.  We  did  not 
touch  a  family  but  had  some  member  on  naval 
or  military  service,  and  hardly  one  but  had  made 
the  uttermost  offering  for  the  cause  for  which 
we  were  at  war;  till  every  home  in  sight  stood  for 
a  symbol  of  sacrifice,  and  every  smoking  hearth 
seemed  an  altar.  But  among  all  these,  save  one 
or  two,  I  have  found  no  fear,  no  complaining,  no 
resentment,  far  less  either  any  vindictiveness  or 
any  despair:  nothing  but  quiet  resignation  and  a 
patient  hope.  The  grounds  of  this  were  just  the 
conscience  of  the  sacredness  of  our  cause  and 
trust  in  the  Faithfulness  and  Love  of  God,  and 
in  His  power  over  death  as  well  as  over  life — 
the  simple  faith  that  the  Lord  redeemeth  the  soul 
of  His  servants,  and  that  none  who  trust  in  Him 
shall  be  desolate.  The  deaths  of  the  sons  of 
those  Christian  homes  in  such  a  faith  for  such  a 
cause  could  only  be  the  entrances  on  higher  forms 
ip.  148. 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR  171 

of  service;  and  the  survivors  had  the  example  of 
the  faith  and  courage  of  their  heroes  to  bear  them 
up  through  the  time  of  their  separation  from 
them.  I  am  bound  to  say  that  it  was  these  gen- 
eral convictions  rather  than  any  specifically  Chris- 
tian dogmas  and  facts,  which  I  found  to  be  the 
sustaining  power  in  those  families.  But  at  the 
same  time  we  must  remember  that  those  are 
families  which  have  been  trained  for  generations 
in  the  life  and  immortality  which  Jesus  brought 
to  light  through  His  gospel  and  in  the  knowledge 
of  the  fact  of  His  Resurrection.  Still  It  was  the 
Faithfulness  of  God  which  mainly  inspired  the 
assurance  that  such  sacrifices  could  not  be  in  vain 
either  for  this  life  or  for  the  next. 

Side  by  side  with  this  faith  there  have  been 
produced,  as  you  know,  among  many  of  our 
mourners — more  in  England  than  in  Scotland — 
those  revivals  of  "spiritualism"  (so-called),  which 
the  experience  of  war  so  often  seems  to  favour. 
The  temptation  to  seek  for  physical  communica- 
tion with  the  beloved  dead  is  a  very  ancient  and 
most  natural  one;  the  motives  which  excite  it  com- 
mand our  respect.  And  who  can  fail  to  appre- 
ciate the  genuineness  and  the  pathos  of  the  hunger, 
which  readily  accepts  the  slightest  fragments  of 


172  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

evidence  that  such  communications  have  been 
achieved?  Yet  from  the  experience  in  our  own 
day  of  the  effects  of  the  habit  we  must  appreciate 
the  anxiety  of  the  prophets  to  warn  their  people 
from  it.  For  neither  then  nor  now  does  it  seem 
possible  to  resort  to  such  practices  except  at  the 
cost  of  the  rational  and  ethical  forces  in  religion. 
We  have  among  ourselves  proofs  that  the  habit 
does  weaken  the  judgment  of  those  who  seek  the 
dead  by  such  ways,  and  does  taint  the  characters 
of  the  media  who  profess  to  satisfy  them.  These 
media  and  the  alleged  results  they  produce  are 
often  unworthy  both  of  the  pious  yearnings  which 
prompt  a  resort  to  them,  and  of  the  blessed  souls 
that  are  the  object  of  those  yearnings.  Fre- 
quently purely  pagan  in  temper,  the  offered  com- 
munications are  on  the  whole  so  ambiguous,  or  so 
irrelevant,  or  so  scrappy,  as  to  suggest  that  if  real, 
they  have  been  framed  to  evade  the  jealous 
scrutiny  of  some  celestial  censor.  What  are  all 
such  results,  even  when  the  most  charitable  judg- 
ment has  been  formed  of  them,  compared  with  the 
sufficient  assurances  we  have  through  His  Word 
and  Spirit  of  the  mercy  and  faithfulness  of  our 
God.  For  the  rest  we  have  Christ's  own  judg- 
ment that  messages  from  the  dead  would  have  no 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR  173 

real  moral  influence  on  the  living:  //  they  hear 
not  Moses  and  the  prophets  neither  will  they  he 
persuaded  if  one  rise  from  the  dead. 


There  is  just  one  other  point  on  which  the  war 
has  brought  us  baclc  to  the  teaching  of  Christ. 
You  may  remark,  and  justly,  that  in  what  I  have 
said  on  the  fellowship  of  Christ's  sufferings  and 
the  power  of  His  Resurrection,  I  have  been  speak- 
ing only  of  Christian  families  and  of  their  sons. 
What  of  the  many  soldiers  who,  without  faith  or 
consciousness  of  the  spiritual  ideals  for  which 
we  fight,  have  evinced  an  equal  heroism  and  as 
freely  given  their  lives  for  our  cause? 

A  countless  number  of  rough,  wild  men,  as 
careless  and  profane  as  Esau,  have  made  as  full  a 
sacrifice  as  the  religious  souls  of  whom  we  have 
been  speaking.  Well,  in  them  we  see  but  another 
proof  of  how  readily  our  timid  respectability 
escapes  from  the  teaching  of  our  Lord.  His  tests 
were  different  from  ours,  and  the  tests  of  war  are 
different,  and  those  two  are  sometimes  startlingly 
similar.  Our  Lord  told  us  plainly  that  greater 
love  hath  no  man  than  that  a  man  lay  down  his 


174  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

life  for  his  friends;  He  pointed  the  righteous  of 
His  day  to  the  harlots  and  publicans  going  into 
the  Kingdom  of  God  before  them;  and  on  the 
Cross  He  accepted  a  fellow-sufferer  who  after 
a  life  of  crime  acknowledged  Him  in  the  moment 
of  death.  The  strictest  of  us  dare  not  limit  the 
number  of  our  fallen  or  of  our  enemy's  fallen, 
who  for  the  character  of  their  dying  were  recog- 
nised and  accepted  by  so  searching  and  merciful 
a  Judge.  But  apart  from  the  question  of  their 
particular  fates  in  another  life,  which  is  not  before 
us  now,  do  not  the  heroism  and  self-sacrifice,  the 
cheerful  bearing  of  hardships  and  pain,  and  the 
comradeship  faithful  unto  death,  which  so  many 
untrained  and  reckless  characters  have  shown, 
recall  our  Lord's  vision  of  the  spiritual  capacity 
of  the  common  man  and  His  test  of  men  not  by 
profession  but  by  loyalty  to  His  spirit?  Not 
every  one  that  saith  unto  Me,  Lord,  Lord,  hut 
he  that  doeth  the  will  of  My  Father.  Certainly 
the  war  has  discovered  to  us  moral  possibilities 
that  are  latent  in  the  most  unlikely  men — possi- 
bilities for  the  latency  of  which  the  men  them- 
selves are  less  to  blame  than  is  the  society  whose 
routine  in  peace  furnished  them  neither  with  ex- 
ample nor  with  any  sacred  urgency. 


RELIGIOUS  EFFECTS  OF  THE  WAR   175 


The  question  is  often  asked  what  attitude  will 
our  returning  soldiers  take  to  their  churches  and 
to  the  forms  of  religious  service  to  which  they 
were  accustomed  before  the  war.  And  it  is  some- 
times answered  that  they  will  come  back  indiffer- 
ent to  our  creeds  and  impatient  of  our  routines  of 
worship  and  old-fashioned  pieties;  drastic  changes 
will  be  required  for  them  in  all  these.  That  re- 
mains to  be  seen;  their  experiences  in  the  war  may 
work  both  ways.  If  some  come  back  with  the  de- 
sire, created  by  camp  and  hut  services,  for  briefer, 
and  more  broken  and  varied  forms  of  worship  and 
religious  teaching,  others  may  return  only  hungry 
for  the  older  fashions — as  some  in  my  country 
have  already  done. 

But  be  that  as  It  may,  the  results  we  can  predict 
with  certainty  will  be  simpler  and  more  funda- 
mental. Our  men  are  coming  back  with  great  ex- 
periences of  reality,  of  catholicity,  and  of  com- 
radeship. They  have  faced  death,  either  in  them- 
selves or  in  others  they  have  known  to  the  utter- 
most what  sacrifice  means;  and  we  may  be  sure 
that  they  will  have  keen  eyes  for  any  pretence  in 


176  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

our  preaching  and  for  any  slackness  in  our  living. 
They  have  seen  men  of  all  creeds  and  denomi- 
nations happily  join  in  worship  and  equally  rise 
to  duty;  and  they  will  not  be  tolerant  of  our  many 
religious  divisions.  They  have  known  what  com- 
rades men  can  be  in  danger  and  fronting  death 
and  they  will  expect  a  heartier  comradeship  among 
their  fellow-members  in  the  churches.  On  these 
things  let  us  be  in  no  doubt.  We  shall  all  need 
to  be  more  real,  more  self-sacrificing,  more  catho- 
lic, and  more  loyal  to  each  other.  For  the  rest 
let  us  remember  that,  as  in  war  so  in  peace,  the 
eternal  moralities  abide  and  the  gospel  of  God 
through  Jesus  Christ  His  Son  is  the  same  yester- 
day, to-day,  and  for  ever. 


FAITH  AND  SERVICE 


VIII 
FAITH  AND  SERVICE 

Give  Thy  strength  unto  Thy  servant, 

And  save  the  son  of  Thy  handmaid. — Ps.  Ixxxvi.  i6. 

O  Lord,  truly  I  am  thy  servant, 

And  the  son  of  Thy  handmaid; 

Thou  hast  loosed  my  bonds. — Ps.  cxvi.  i6. 

The  Psalm  to  which  the  first  of  these  verses  be- 
longs has  been  called  "The  Prayer  of  the  Aver- 
age Believer".  It  is  an  awkward  description,  but 
with  this  truth  in  it,  that  the  Psalm  rises  from  a 
sense  of  need  universal  among  men,  and  that  its 
faith,  like  that  of  the  other  Psalm,  rests  upon 
grounds  which  are  the  only  sure  bases  of  faith 
anywhere  or  at  any  time :  the  nature  of  God  Him- 
self;  the  believer's  experience  of  a  personal  rela- 
tion to  Him;  and  (in  consequence)  the  believer's 
place  and  share  in  the  family  which  God  has 
founded  on  earth — the  Church,  which  in  the 
Psalmist's  day,  and  hardly  less  in  our  own,  has 

179 


180  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

come  by  a  community  of  suffering  and  faith  to  be 
almost  coincident  with  the  nation. 

All  the  prayers  which  these  Psalms  utter, 
emerge  from  a  very  human  sense  of  helplessness 
and  need,  /  found  trouble  and  sorrow.  I  was 
brought  low,  and  He  helped  me.  I  am  poor  and 
needy.  In  the  day  of  my  trouble  do  I  call  unto 
Thee — or  my  day  of  trouble,  as  though  "in  my 
time  of  sorrow".  The  phrase  brings  us  all  to 
His  side,  for  which  of  us  is  without  such  a  day — 
whether  it  be  dim  and  unheroic,  that  perhaps  we 
could  not  define  any  more  clearly  than  our 
brothers,  these  Psalmists,  have  defined  theirs;  or 
whether  it  carry  those  nobler  agonies,  which  have 
fallen  upon  our  nation  and  on  each  of  us  singly  in 
the  present  tragedy  of  the  world. 


The  first  of  the  grounds  of  the  Psalmist's  faith 
is  the  Divine  Nature — God  Himself,  God's  char- 
acter and  power.  Many  of  the  verses  In  the 
eighty-sixth  Psalm,  Introduced  by  the  word  for, 
are  simple  declarations  of  what  God  is  and  wills 
to  do.  For  Thou,  Lord,  art  good,  and  ready  to 
forgive;  and  plenteous  in  mercy.    For  Thou  art 


FAITH  AND  SERVICE  181 

great,  and  doest  wondrous  things:  Thou  art  God 
alone.  For  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  a  God  full  of  com- 
passion, and  gracious,  long-suffering,  and  plente- 
ous  in  mercy  and  truth.  The  primal  and  everlast- 
ing confidence  of  man  lies  here.  According  as  men 
have  understood  the  character  of  God  their  own 
characters  have  developed;  according  as  they  have 
trusted  that  character  their  hope  has  been  sure 
both  for  this  life  and  that  which  is  to  come.  From 
the  first  of  revelation  to  the  present  day  our 
prophets  have  begun  here  and  have  come  back 
here,  while  even  those  who  have  lost  faith  in 
everything  else  have  at  least  clung  to  the  instinct 
that  God  is  good. 

You  remember  that  when  God  would  redeem 
His  people  from  the  tyranny  of  Egypt,  He  bad^ 
them  believe  in  His  sufficiency:  /  am  what  I  am. 
And  it  was  because  they  believed  in  this — without 
at  the  time  understanding  all  it  meant — ^that  when 
His  call  came  they  rose  like  one  man  and  followed 
their  leaders  to  the  desert  and  to  war.  Their  re- 
ward was  given  them  even  there  in  the  unfolding 
of  what  that  sufficiency  contained;  so  that  with  the 
righteousness  of  the  Law  there  were  revealed  the 
riches  of  the  Divine  Grace,  and  the  love  of  the 
Almighty  came  home  to  their  hearts  even  among 


182  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

the  thunders  of  Sinai.  The  Lord  passed  by  before 
him,  and  proclaimed,  The  Lord,  the  Lord,  a  God 
full  of  compassion,  and  gracious,  slow  to  anger, 
and  plenteous  in  mercy  and  truth;  keeping  mercy 
for  thousands,  forgiving  iniquity,  transgression, 
and  sin.  And  thou  shalt  remember  all  the  way 
which  the  Lord  thy  God  hath  led  thee  through 
the  wilderness — yes,  and  we  may  add  through 
years  of  sore  and  fluctuating  war — to  know  what 
was  in  thine  heart,  whether  thou  wouldest  keep 
His  commandments  or  no.  And  thou  shalt  con- 
sider in  thine  heart  that  as  a  man  chasteneth  his 
son,  so  the  Lord  thy  God  chasteneth  thee.  You 
see  that  (to  use  Scriptural  language)  God  would 
not  only  bare  His  arm  as  when  He  smote  their 
enemies  before  them,  but  He  would  lay  bare  His 
Heart  as  well.  And  so  through  every  following 
generation,  the  progress  of  their  religion  meant 
the  progress  of  their  knowledge  of  God — of 
His  Righteousness  and  of  His  Grace — and 
every  rise  and  refinement  in  their  morality  was 
their  response  to  what  He  told  them  of  Himself. 
Even  the  assurance  of  the  life  to  come  which  was 
so  slow  to  arrive  in  Israel,  even  the  conviction  of 
the  immortality  of  the  individual,  found  its  sources 
in  the  people's  experience  of  the  reasonableness, 


FAITH  AND  SERVICE  183 

the  faithfulness,  and  the  power  of  God.  And  just 
because  God  is  Love,  a  love  more  true  and  self- 
sacrificing  than  the  most  heroic  among  men,  just 
because  humility,  patience,  and  suffering  to  the 
utmost  for  others  are  the  essence  of  the  perfect 
character,  we  find  it  not  difficult  but  natural  to 
believe  in  the  Incarnation,  the  Passion,  and  the 
saving  Death  of  the  Son  of  God  Himself. 

All  the  uncertainties  and  corruptions  of  faith 
have  sprung  from  forgetfulness  of  this;  and  his- 
tory is  strewn  with  the  wrecks  of  religions  that 
have  sought  from  God  something  else  than  Him- 
self. We  commit  the  same  mistake  still.  We  put 
our  creeds,  we  put  our  Churches,  we  put  even  the 
letter  of  Scripture  between  our  hearts  and  the  liv- 
ing God.  My  brethren,  it  is  trust,  not  in  a  scheme 
of  salvation,  but  in  the  heart  of  the  Eternal  and 
Almighty,  which  thought  of  us  when  we  were  yet 
sinners,  in  the  Infinite  Love  which  came  to  our 
side  in  our  warfare  with  temptation,  and  took 
the  curse  of  our  moral  defeats  upon  Itself — not 
trust  in  Scripture,  but  the  vision  which  Scripture 
gives  us  of  the  Living  God;  not  the  amount  of 
creed  a  man  believes  nor  the  Church  he  belongs 
to,  but  the  powers  of  God's  justice  and  grace,  with 
which  both  of  these  bring  him  into  touch.     For 


184.  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

everywhere  and  always  this  is  eternal  life,  to  know 
Thee,  and  Jesus  Christ  whom  Thou  hast  sent. 

Certainly  there  is  nothing  else  which  is  going 
to  carry  us  through  the  present  war.  The  arro- 
gance of  arms  and  the  criminal  statesmanship 
which  provoked  it,  and  the  atrocious  cruelties  with 
which  it  has  been  conducted  by  our  enemies,  espe- 
cially in  Belgium,  Armenia,  and  on  the  seas — as 
the  Lord  reigneth,  these  cannot  triumph.  As 
righteousness  and  judgment  are  the  foundations 
of  His  throne,  such  forces  are  destined  to  fail. 
They  have  failed  already  in  the  ambitions  with 
which  they  flung  themselves  on  the  peace  of  the 
world.  If  we  be  dismayed  before  them,  our  dis- 
may is  due  to  our  want  of  the  knowledge  of  God. 
If  our  faith  in  Him  be  sound,  and  our  obedience 
abide  to  the  strong  conscience  He  kindled  among 
us,  there  can  be  no  fear  of  the  end.  Whatsoever 
troubles  or  disasters  may  still  befall  us,  there  can 
under  God  be  no  fear  of  the  end. 

It  was  the  same  truth  which  Thomas  Chalmers 
used  to  enforce.  In  a  sermon  which  he  preached 
during  our  last  great  war  against  a  tyranny  that 
threatened  the  liberty  of  Europe,  he  applied  this 
truth  to  our  conduct.  "Dismiss,"  he  said,  "your 
scholastic  conceptions  of  the  Deity,  and  keep  to 


FAITH  AND  SERVICE  185 

that  warm  and  affecting  view  of  Him  that  we 
have  in  the  Bible.  For  if  we  do  not,  our  hearts 
will  remain  shut  against  its  powerful  and  pathetic 
representations  of  the  character  of  God."  "Not 
only  do  we  owe  to  His  liberality  every  breath, 
but  draw  from  it  every  comfort  we  enjoy.  It 
proves  His  love  to  men  that  He  opens  His  hand 
and  feeds  them  all;  but  it  is  a  far  higher  proof 
of  love  that  He  so  loved  them  as  to  give  up  His 
only  begotten  Son  in  their  behalf.  All  your  gifts 
are  as  nothing  to  this.  Before  such  an  example 
there  can  be  but  one  test  of  the  adequacy  of  your 
benevolence — what  is  the  extent  of  your  sacrifice 
in  performing  it?  Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your 
Father  in  Heaven  is  perfect." 

Yes,  for  our  conduct  as  well  as  our  faith — and 
especially  for  those  duties  of  self-denial  and  sac- 
rifice which  the  righteous  cause  of  our  nations  at 
present  demands  from  us — the  one  sufficient  in- 
spiration is  God  Himself,  as  He  is  in  Christ 
Jesus  His  Son. 


If  the  first  ground  of  the  Psalmist's  faith  be  the 
character  of  God,  his  second  is  his  personal  re- 
lation to  God.    His  expression  of  this  is  somewhat 


186  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

distorted  in  our  English  versions:  preserve  my 
soul,  for  I  am  holy,  or,  as  the  Revised  Version 
gives  it,  /  am  godly.  So  rendered,  it  sounds  self- 
righteous.  But  it  is  something  very  different. 
The  original  cannot  be  put  in  one  English  word. 
It  describes  not  moral  merit  but  a  religious  ex- 
perience and  temper.  It  means  one  who  has 
known  the  faithful  mercy  of  God  and  who  has 
shown  love  and  loyalty  to  Him  in  return.  When 
the  Psalmist  says  to  God,  /  am  godly,  he  means 
"I  am  Thine  by  the  experience  of  Thy  grace  to 
me,  and  by  the  answer  of  my  heart  to  it" ;  and  he 
makes  this  relation  the  second  ground  of  his  faith: 
not  only  Thou  art  God,  but  Thou  art  my  God. 

There  are  two  subjects  which  each  of  these 
Psalmists  calls  his  own:  my  trouble  and  my  God. 
For  as  really  as  a  man  is  sure  of  the  first,  so  can 
he  be  sure  of  the  second.  Pain  gets  a  long  way 
into  the  heart,  and  there  is  nothing  that  a  man 
may  feel  more  to  be  his  very  own;  the  heart 
hwweth  its  own  bitterness.  Pain  gets  a  long  way 
into  the  heart,  but  the  Love  of  God  goes  deeper 
and  awakes  an  even  keener  sense  of  possession. 
Deeper  than  any  sorrow  or  doubt  are  a  tender 
conscience  and  penitence  for  sin.     Yet  these  are 


FAITH  AND  SERVICE  187 

only  the  beginning  of  our  God's  dealing  with  us; 
the  first  fruits  of  His  Spirit  to  each  of  us  per- 
sonally. The  rest  will  come.  How  much  con- 
science and  penitence  promise,  how  much  they  en- 
sure, the  experience  of  millions  of  common  men 
who  have  responded  to  them  can  testify:  the  being 
brought  away  from  one's  past,  the  assurance  of 
pardon,  the  conquest  of  evil  habits,  the  ineffable 
persuasion  of  being  trusted  by  our  merciful 
Father,  the  sense  of  such  permanence  in  the  new 
elements  of  character  granted  to  us  that  neither 
life  not  death  can  be  conceived  as  destroying  them, 
with  all  those  instincts  of  faith  and  trust  which  a 
faithful  God  cannot  forsake  or  disappoint.  It 
is  on  such  experimental  grounds  that  men  grow 
sure  of  their  future  in  this  life,  and,  without  any 
other  argument  or  promise  than  are  here  im- 
plicit, adventure  upon  the  life  beyond. 

In  addition,  each  of  the  Psalmists  says,  /  ant 
Thy  servant.  There  is  no  greater  assurance  that 
a  man  can  lay  to  his  heart  than  the  conscience 
that  he  is  doing  God's  will  and  in  the  spirit  of 
Christ  serving  his  fellow-men.  Whatever  doubt 
or  failure  fall  on  him  the  sense  of  being  loyal  to 
his  trust,  and  of  being  of  use  in  the  service  God 


188  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

has  commanded,  must  sustain  and  make  quick 
the  hope  of  deliverance.  Whether  in  darkness 
or  light,  in  perplexity  or  clear  vision  the  test  is 
unfailing.  Am  I  Thy  servant?  Am  I  profitable, 
and  even  if  that  cannot  be  claimed,  am  I  at  least 
obedient,  obedient  to  the  orders  and  example  of 
my  Lord? 

Be  it  ours,  my  brethren,  to  maintain  through  the 
distractions  and  disasters  of  these  times  the 
strength  and  purity  of  our  personal  religion;  to 
see  to  it  that  our  communion  with  God  and  our 
private  obedience  to  Him  are  not  broken  or  weak- 
ened by  other  interests  and  engagements  however 
sacred  these  may  be;  to  be  instant  in  prayer,  regu- 
lar in  our  use  of  the  means  of  grace,  and  care- 
ful to  maintain  the  pieties  which  the  strain  and 
sacrifices  of  the  war  sometimes  threaten  to  inter- 
rupt. Our  nations  and  the  sacred  cause  commit- 
ted to  them  depend  on  the  faith,  the  purity,  the 
obedience  and  honour  towards  God  of  their  in- 
dividual members;  on  the  resolution  and  buoyancy 
of  their  single  souls.  And  these  are  to  be  main- 
tained by  communion  with  Him  who  said,  My 
Grace  is  sufficient  for  thee. 


FAITH  AND  SERVICE  189 


Interpreters  have  been  divided  as  to  the  mean- 
ing of  the  words  son  of  thine  handmaid.  The 
metaphor  itself  is  clear;  in  ancient  times  no  slaves 
were  regarded  as  so  reliable  as  those  born  in  the 
household.  But  do  the  Psalmists  apply  the  meta- 
phor to  the  natural  or  to  the  ecclesiastical  family? 
Some  interpreters  take  the  first  opinion  and  say 
that  the  Psalmist  calls  to  mind  his  own  pious 
mother.  Others  hold  that  the  phrase  refers  to  the 
Church,  which  in  those  days  was  the  Nation,  and, 
by  our  community  of  faith  and  sacrifice,  has  to- 
day again  so  much  become  the  Nation.  Others 
think  that  the  Psalmists  only  intend  a  servant  truly 
devoted  to  his  Lord  and  His  personal  interests. 
Among  these  possibilities  St.  Augustine,  as  usual, 
takes  his  own  beautiful  way,  and  applies  the  say- 
ing first  to  Christ  and  then  through  Him  to  all 
believers.  "Thy  servant,  and  the  son  of  Thy 
handmaid — *of  what  handmaid?'  (he  asks,  and 
answers),  'Of  her  who,  when  He  was  announced 
as  about  to  be  born  of  her,  answered  and  said, 
Behold  the  handmaid  of  the  Lord!'  Of  her  the 
Lord  was  born  in  the  form  of  a  servant.     And 


190  DUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

each  several  Christian  placed  in  the  body  of 
Christ  may  say,  save  the  son  of  Thy  handmaid." 
So  far  Augustine;  and  Matthew  Henry  remarks: 
"The  children  of  godly  parents  who  were  betimes 
dedicated  to  the  Lord  may  plead  it  with  Him  that 
if  they  come  under  the  discipline  of  the  family 
they  are  also  entitled  to  the  privileges  of  it." 

In  this  question  the  most  of  us  Scots  and  of  you 
Americans  can  have  no  difficulty.  What  seem  to 
others  to  be  exclusive  alternatives  we  combine. 
We  were  reckoned  of  the  membership  of  the 
Church  on  the  strength  of  our  birth  into  a  Chris- 
tian family,  and  on  the  vows  taken  for  us  by  our 
own  parents.  None  of  us  can  separate  the 
Mother  at  whose  knees  we  first  learned  to  pray 
from  the  Mother-Church  to  which  she  brought 
us  and  by  which  we  were  baptised,  instructed,  and 
received  to  Communion.  To  us  the  Church  and 
the  Home  are  one.  It  is  a  noble  heritage,  a  debt 
heavier  than  most  children  born  into  this  world 
owe  to  their  families,  their  Church,  and  their 
Nation.  Let  us  abide  loyal  to  the  obligation, 
especially  when  in  our  own  sons  we  have  the  in- 
spiring example  of  courage  and  obedience  unto 
death. 

The  present  war  has  given  heroic  evidence  of 


FAITH  AND  SERVICE  191 

the  integrity  and  devotion  of  the  children  of  the 
Christian  homes  of  my  own  land.  It  is  a  certain 
fact  that,  while  the  voluntary  system  of  enlistment 
still  prevailed,  some  90  per  cent,  of  the  sons  of 
the  manses  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  who  were 
of  military  age,  had  gone  on  service  with  their 
country's  Forces ;  and  I  believe  that  the  proportion 
was  just  as  great  in  the  manses  of  my  own  Church. 
Figures  are  not  available  for  the  other  homes  of 
our  Scottish  Churches,  but  if  they  were  they  would 
tell  the  same  tale.  To  our  young  men  the  call, 
acclaimed  by  the  conscience  of  the  whole  Nation, 
came  from  the  Highest  source;  and  in  answering 
it  so  nobly,  and  (as  so  many  have  done)  in  freely 
laying  down  their  lives  for  its  sake,  they  were  ful- 
filling the  prayers  of  their  parents  and  the  vows 
which  in  baptism  their  fathers  and  mothers  and 
their  Church  took  to  God  for  them.  Not  for 
glory  went  they  forth  from  us,  nor  to  fight  for 
fighting's  sake,  nor  in  ignorance  of  the  awful 
possibilities  which  lay  before  each  of  them;  but 
conscious  of  the  sacred  issues  of  the  war,  de- 
liberately, and  because  the  Hand  of  God  was  upon 
them  in  the  strength  of  the  most  righteous  cause 
for  which  nations  were  ever  called  to  do  battle. 
Some  months  ago  I  received  a  letter  from  a  coun- 


192  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

try  manse  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  whose  son, 
a  graduate  of  my  own  University,  had  just  fallen, 
and  I  take  from  it  these  sentences:  "From  the 
brave  bright  letters  sent  home  from  the  Front 
one  fails  to  learn  the  truth,  that  some  of  the 
writers  know  in  their  hearts  that  they  are  tread- 
ing the  road  to  Calvary.  As  I  looked  at  the  last 
photograph  sent  home  from  France  of  our  boy, 
its  expression  seemed  only  sad,  but  I  know  now 
what  it  means — 'I  shall  not  come  back,  but  I  am 
going  forward'.  And  his  is  the  story  of  so  many 
others." 

My  younger  friends,  in  those  immediately  ahead 
of  you  in  years  you  have  examples  of  unselfishness 
and  heroism  more  powerful  than  any  generation 
ever  had  presented  to  it.  Follow  them  as  they 
have  followed  Christ.  Remember,  as  they  did, 
your  debts  to  your  Homes,  to  your  Church,  and 
to  your  Nation,  but  behind  and  beneath  all  these 
your  dedication  to  your  Lord,  and — in  War  and 
Peace  alike — rest  on  His  Character  and  His 
Power,  His  Love  for  each  of  you  singly,  and  His 
Grace  that  will  never  fail  you.  Lord,  I  am  Thy 
servant,  and  the  son  of  Thy  handmaid. 


THE  CLOUD  OF  WITNESSES 


IX 

THE  CLOUD  OF  WITNESSES 

"Wherefore,  seeing  we  also  are  compassed  about  with 
so  great  a  cloud  of  witnesses,  let  us  lay  aside  every  weight, 
and  the  sin  which  doth  so  easily  beset  us,  and  let  us  run 
with  patience  the  race  that  is  set  before  us,  looking  unto 
Jesus,  the  author  and  finisher  of  our  faith ;  who,  for  the 
joy  that  was  set  before  Him,  endured  the  cross,  despising 
the  shame,  and  is  set  down  at  the  right  hand  of  the  throne 
of  God."— Heb.  xii.  i,  2. 

So  great  a  cloud — rather  so  dense  a  cloud.  It  is 
a  single  word  used  of  clouds  which  pile  themselves 
heavily  on  the  horizon,  but  it  is  also  applied  by- 
Greek  poets  to  throngs  of  men  on  the  battle-field, 
pressing  down  upon  those  who  stand  to  meet  them; 
and  this  is  rather  the  meaning  here,  as  Is  seen  from 
the  phrase  compassed  about.  The  cloud  is  there- 
fore not  the  ve^os  ayiov  koX  SietSes  of  Clement  of 
Alexandria's  fancy,  "a  holy  and  pellucid  cloud" 
gloriously  resting  above  in  a  serene  sky,  but  rather 
a  cloud  that  has  come  down  upon  those  who  are 

195 


196  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

still  fighting  on  the  earth — irtpiKdiitvov,  lying  about 
us,  and  enveloping  our  ranks.  In  Bengel's  hap- 
pier phrase  it  is  "an  urgent  cloud".  And  this,  as 
we  shall  see,  is  in  harmony  with  the  purpose  of 
the  writer  which  is  not  sentiment  but  morality. 

The  word  witnesses  is  capable  of  several  mean- 
ings, of  various  degrees  of  moral  value,  from  that 
of  mere  "spectators"  upwards;  and  these  mean- 
ings (let  us  at  once  admit)  may  have  overlapped 
in  the  writer's  imagination  or  swiftly  suggested 
each  other  to  him  just  as  they  do  to  ourselves.  But 
the  context  makes  clear  which  is  the  dominant. 

After  a  fashion  common  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment the  writer  sees  the  moral  life  as  a  race;  and 
it  is  natural  to  begin  to  interpret  his  witnesses  as 
its  interested  spectators:  thronging  above  and 
about  the  arena  and  watching  us  with  sympathy 
upon  the  same  course  over  which  in  their  time 
they  too  have  struggled.  Neither  in  Scripture  nor 
in  our  spiritual  experience  is  there  anything  to  for- 
bid such  sympathies  to  our  blessed  dead.  On  the 
contrary,  we  can  hardly  realise  that  continuation 
of  their  personalities  and  their  service,  of  which 
we  are  assured  in  Christ,  without  the  conviction 
that  they  still  remember  and  still  love  us;  that,  in 
particular,  they  cannot  remain  themselves,  they 


THE  CLOUD  OF  WITNESSES  197 

cannot  still  be  themselves,  if  they  have  already  for- 
gotten how  they  left  their  warfare  unfinished,  left 
it  unfinished  to  us  who  still  hold  the  field.  And  to 
such  inferences  of  heart  and  of  reason  we  may 
cling  the  more  confidently  as  we  read  that,  when 
His  servants  enter  the  Presence  of  their  Lord  and 
see  Him  as  He  is,  they  become  like  Him — like 
Him 

Who  still  remembers  in  the  skies 
His  tears,  His  agonies  and  cries. 

Such  beliefs  are  natural  and  have  their  proper 
comfort,  provided  we  hold  them  in  subordination 
to  the  faith  that  He  is  our  great  High  Priest, 
who  ever  liveth  to  make  intercession  for  us,  and 
whose  grace  and  sympathy  are  alone  our  suffi- 
ciency. For,  as  the  text  concludes,  it  is  not  look- 
ing unto  them  but  looking  unto  Jesus,  which  is  our 
duty  and  our  salvation. 

The  meaning  "spectators,"  however,  if  it  Is  Im- 
plied In  our  text,  is  hardly  the  main  intention  of 
the  writer.  His  witnesses  (as  we  see  from  other 
passages  In  his  Epistle)  are  witnesses  not  of  us 
but  to  the  faith  given  them  by  God  and  proved 
by  them  in  life  and  death.  The  text  enforces  not 
so  much  their  interest  in  us  as  our  duty  because  of 
them:  not  so  much  that  they  are  looking  on  us 


198  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

as  that  we  should  look  in  the  same  direction  as 
they.  It  is  not  only  their  sympathy  which  the 
writer  sees  enveloping  us,  but  the  more  urgent 
force  of  their  example;  and  this  not  a  past  but  a 
present  example;  so  that  we  may  bend  our  wills 
and  stand  true  to  what  they  have  testified  and  still 
testify.  The  central  emphasis,  then,  is  that  their 
influence  is  not  past  but  present;  and  that  we  are 
not  to  betray  all  they  stood,  fought  and  died  for 
by  our  slackness.  Not  lest  we  forget  what  they 
were,  but  lest  we  fail  to  feel  them  about  us  still: 
and  so  betray  them  and  their  cause  to  their  very 
faces. 

Their  presence,  their  urgency,  and  our  duty  in 
face  of  them — these  are  the  three  emphases  of 
the  text. 

Four  years  ago,  the  cloud  of  witnesses  hung 
somewhat  far  upon  the  skies  of  my  people,  drift- 
ing now  and  then  a  little  nearer  as  there  passed  up 
into  it  the  face  of  one  we  loved  or  honoured — par- 
ent, teacher,  leader  or  comrade — taken  singly  and 
at  intervals,  as  is  Death's  normal  way  in  time  of 
peace;  but  the  mass  of  it  remained  distant,  vague, 
and  cold.  How  near  these  four  years  have 
brought  it  all,  none  know  better  than  the  families 
of  the  Scottish  people,  whose  sons  have  already 


THE  CLOUD  OF  WITNESSES  199 

fallen  in  thousands.  How  encompassing  It  is,  and 
how  densely  filled  with  "kent"  and  dear  faces — 
for  the  most  part  young  and  fair,  yet  stamped  with 
as  urgent  and  in  many  cases,  as  deliberate  and 
august  a  witness  to  righteousness  and  to  faith  in 
God,  as  the  faces  of  the  early  martyrs;  and  like 
these  it  is  a  witness  sealed  in  blood. 

Nor  is  it  sufficient  in  this  connection  to  speak 
only  of  the  Fallen.  No  one  who  has  watched,  as 
I  have  watched,  our  hospital  ships  at  French 
quays,  filling  with  the  constant  stream  of  wounded 
from  the  front;  no  one  who  has  spoken  into  the 
faces  of  thousands  of  our  Scots  soldiers  or  taken 
the  Communion  with  them  on  their  last  steps  to 
the  trenches;  no  one  who  has  seen  the  shrunken 
battalions  marching  back  from  the  battle  worn 
and  weary  but  with  steadfast  faces — can  have 
failed  to  feel  his  cloud  of  witnesses  still  more 
dense  and  still  more  closely  encompassing.  To 
have  to  hold  back  as  I  saw  them  go  forward  felt 
like  being  a  deserter!  We  knew,  as  we  watched 
them,  that  to  be  again  mean  or  selfish  or  unbe- 
lieving, ever  again  to  compromise  with  right  and 
duty  would  be  to  betray  them  and  the  sacred 
Cause  for  which  they  have  fought  and  so  many 
of  them  have  died. 


200  OUR  COiMMON  CONSCIENCE 

I  do  not  say  that  all,  whether  the  dead  or  the 
living,  have  been  able  to  articulate  their  testi- 
mony even  to  themselves.  But  as  a  French 
schoolmaster  writes  from  the  trenches:  "Even 
under  the  cannon  we  do  not  forget  the  ideal  for 
which  we  are  battling.  To  know  that  the  accom- 
plishment of  our  present  duty  surpasses  in  range 
both  our  own  powers  and  our  time  and  even  our 
country — since  it  concerns  humanity  in  the  most 
profound  and  complete  sense  of  the  word — is  a 
stimulus  to  us  of  incalculable  vigour.  This  sen- 
timent you  will  find  not  only  among  those  whom 
a  certain  culture  has  refined  and  rendered  con- 
scious of  the  part  they  play,  you  will  find  it  again 
very  powerful — though  necessarily  a  little  vague 
— among  the  most  humble  and  least  cultivated  of 
the  soldiers." 

So  that  whether  fallen  or  still  fighting  they  are 
all  to-day  urgent  upon  us  in  a  volume  of  faith,  of 
devotion  to  a  spiritual  duty,  and  of  fearless  self- 
sacrifice  such  as  no  generation  in  the  history  of 
mankind  has  ever  felt  the  weight  of.  There  is 
hardly  a  phrase  which  this  writer  applies  to  his 
witnesses  that  is  not  deserved  by  ours.  Literally 
out  of  weakness  they  were  made  strong,  and 
waxed  valiant  in  fight;  for  they  came  of  a  people 


THE  CLOUD  OF  WITNESSES         201 

unprepared  for  war,  and  till  it  broke  they  had 
with  a  few  exceptions  no  military  training;  yet  in 
a  few  months  they  proved  the  equals  of  any 
soldiery  in  Europe,  and  all  this  by  the  strength  of 
those  spiritual  qualities,  without  which  their  multi- 
tude and  the  armaments  we  have  tardily  supplied 
them  would  have  been  of  no  avail.  Did  they  go 
out  not  knowing  whither  they  went?  They  went 
in  obedience  to  a  call  which  came  to  them  from 
the  Highest  Source,  and  whose  authority  was  ac- 
claimed by  the  universal  conscience  of  their  race. 
Out  of  a  civilisation,  which  (as  we  were  all  com- 
ing to  tremble  at)  rested  upon  much  that  was 
doubtful  and  some  things  that  were  rotten,  and 
which  had  been  rent  from  top  to  bottom  by  the 
perfidy  of  those  who  boasted  themselves  as  its 
supreme  representatives  and  guardians,  our  sailors 
and  soldiers  have  gone  forth  desiring,  fighting  and 
dying  for,  a  better  world,  a  world  that  hath  foun- 
dations, whose  builder  and  maker  is  God.  In 
faith  they  fought  and  wrought  righteousness;  in 
faith  they  endured  as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible. 
And  so,  too,  many  have  died  in  faith,  not  having 
received  the  promises,  but  having  seen  them  and 
greeted  them  from  afar.  It  is  not  only  for  the 
defence  of  our  lands,  it  is  not  only  for  the  turning 


202  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

of  a  ruthless  invader  from  our  homes  that  we 
thank  them  to-day;  but  that  they  encompass  us 
with  so  urgent  a  cloud  of  spiritual  force,  and  with 
their  conscience,  their  faith,  and  their  splendid 
devotion  have  come  between  us  and  the  sins  which 
have  beset  our  national  life. 

But  our  text  concludes,  looking  unto  Jesus. 
The  war  and  the  sacrifices  it  has  laid  upon  us 
will  not  have  been  in  vain,  if  they  carry  us  back,  to 
Christ  and  His  Cross,  and  especially  in  these  four 
respects:  if  they  restore  to  us  His  full  revelation 
of  God;  if  they  bring  home  to  us  the  distinction 
between  the  peace  of  this  world  and  the  Peace  He 
alone  can  give;  if  they  burn  into  our  hearts  the 
supreme  lessons  of  the  Cross — ^the  need  of  sac- 
rifice even  unto  death  in  order  to  overcome  evil, 
the  moral  force  of  vicarious  suffering;  and  if 
while  drawing  us  into  the  fellowship  of  His  suffer- 
ings they  throw  us  back  upon  the  power  of  His 
Resurrection.  In  other  addresses  in  this  volume 
I  have  tried  to  show  that  these  are  among  the 
religious  effects  of  this  war  upon  my  people.^ 
Here,  in  connection  with  my  text,  I  shall  dwell  only 

^  See  above,  the  Addresses  on  "Peace — False  and  True" 
and  'The  Religious  Effects  of  the  War." 


THE  CLOUD  OF  WITNESSES         203 

on  the  last  of  them.  To  us  In  part  has  come  again 
what  came  to  Israel  from  her  sons  who  fell  in  the 
Maccabean  wars  and  what  the  Christian  Church 
won  from  the  blood  of  the  martyrs.  There  has 
been  born  in  numbers  of  our  Scottish  people  a 
new  faith  in  God  as  the  God  of  the  living,  and 
in  His  power  and  faithfulness  for  the  life  to  come 
as  well  as  for  that  which  now  is.  We  cannot  be- 
lieve but  that  the  deaths  of  our  sons  in  such  a  faith 
for  such  a  cause  are  but  the  entrances  on  higher 
forms  of  service.  His  servants  shall  serve  Him. 
We  do  not  pray  for  their  salvation,  because  we 
trust  the  faithfulness  of  our  God.  They  have 
fulfilled  the  love  of  which  Christ  tells  us  there  is 
none  greater,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his 
friends.  Though  we  miss  their  bodily  presence 
with  a  pain  that  never  lessens,  though  in  an 
emptier  world  we  shall  long  for  them  till  the  end 
of  our  own  days  in  it,  we  shall  not  mourn  nor  com- 
plain. To  use  terms  applied  by  the  early  Christians 
to  their  dead  they  are  our  "defuncti  et  prsemissi," 
those  who  have  acquitted  themselves  of  their 
duty  and  who  have  been  sent  on  before  us.  Both 
sea  and  land  are  the  more  beautiful  to-day  as  the 
scenes  of  their  heroism,  and  more  sacred  as  the 
altars  of  their  sacrifice.     Yet  their  passage  but 


204.  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

draws  us  nearer  to  the  Lord  above,  to  Whose  ex- 
ample they  rose.  And  they  have  not  vanished. 
We  have  them  with  us  still,  a  cloud  of  witnesses 
compassing  us  about.  If  our  spirits  are  awake, 
our  communion  with  them  is  even  more  close  than 
when  they  were  beside  us  in  the  flesh;  for  their 
characters  and  their  testimonies,  of  which  we  may 
have  had  little  inkling  before,  have  grown  to  a 
pitch  of  proof  and  influence  that  can  never  fail 
to  rebuke,  permeate,  and  uplift  our  own. 

With  such  trust  in  the  father,  of  whom  every 
family  in  heaven  and  earth  is  named,  with  such 
assurance  of  His  faithfulness  to  them  and  such 
experience  of  their  present  moral  influence  on 
ourselves,  we  have  no  need  to  resort  to  those 
means  by  which  some — through  a  noble  error  of 
their  feelings — are  tempted  to  seek  physical  com- 
munication with  their  beloved  dead.  But  I  have 
elsewhere  spoken  sufficiently  of  this.^ 

We,  who  are  older,  and  some  of  us  much  older, 
than  they  were,  remembering  the  worst  of  war 
that  it  falls  most  heavily  on  the  young,  will  rec- 
ognise our  debt  to  the  youth  of  our  peoples,  and 
feel  an  added  duty  towards  the  fresh  ideals  and 
causes  bursting  on  the  world  with  this  last  recruit 
^  See  above,  pp.  171-173. 


THE  CLOUD  OF  WITNESSES         205 

to  Its  generations.  To  the  Inspiration  we  draw 
from  their  courage  as  Individuals,  we  older  men 
must  add  the  care — ^that  the  visions  and  enthu- 
siasms of  our  sons  do  not  suffer  from  this  des- 
perate thinning  of  their  ranks,  across  all  the  coun- 
tries of  Europe  and  soon  to  take  place  on  your 
own  continent;  that  more  than  ever  we  control  the 
accumulating  prejudices  of  our  years  and  content- 
ment with  things  as  they  are,  that  we  husband 
such  force  and  freshness  as  remain  In  ourselves 
and  continue,  alongside  the  young  men  who  are 
left  to  us,  to  play  our  rapidly  diminishing  part 
with  unabated  zest  and  courage. 

On  you  who  are  their  contemporaries  or  just 
behind  them  has  fallen  an  obligation  heavier  per- 
haps than  was  ever  felt  by  any  generation  In  the 
history  of  our  people.  In  those  whom  It  is  most 
natural  for  you  to  follow,  as  being  immediately 
In  front  of  you,  you  have  a  wealth  of  example  that 
should  control  and  inspire  you  throughout  your 
lives.  See  that  you  cherish  the  value  of  spiritual 
ideals  both  for  men  and  nations,  and  without 
flinching  face  the  full  cost  of  your  duty  to  them. 
In  ways  that  may  show  no  heroism  but  need  no 
less  virtue  and  toil,  see  that  you  practise  that  faith- 
fulness In  service  and  sacrifice  to  which  they  have 


206  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

risen.  Accept  discipline  as  patiently  as  they  did. 
Accept  discipline,  I  say,  for  that  is  the  foundation 
of  all.  Be  careful  of  the  details  in  the  routine  of 
your  life ;  but  be  equally  ready  for  its  emergencies. 
Never  grudge  the  call  to  extra  work,  nor  shrink 
from  danger  in  the  way  to  it.  Never  keep  back 
your  strength  in  selfish  remonstrance  at  the  in- 
equalities of  reward  or  fortune,  which  in  peace 
are  almost  as  great  as  in  war.  If  you  thus  train 
yourselves  in  the  work  of  ordinary  days,  and  in 
answer  to  God's  more  urgent  calls,  you  shall  be 
able,  like  them  who  have  shown  you  the  way,  to 
make  the  last  resignation  of  life  itself  In  humble 
hope  and  peace. 


COURAGE  AND  ITS  THREE  SOURCES 


COURAGE  AND  ITS  THREE  SOURCES^ 

Why  art  thou  cast  down,  O  my  soul?  and  why  art 
thou  disquieted  within  me?  Hope  in  God;  for  I  shall 
yet  praise  Him,  Who  is  the  health  of  my  countenance, 
and  my  God. — Ps.  xlii.  5,  11;  xliii.  5. 

The  two  Psalms  from  which  this  triple  refrain 
is  taken  are  properly  one  Psalm,  which  the  re- 
frain divides  into  three  strophes.  In  these  a 
wronged  and  banished  man  pours  out — to  use  his 
own  words — pours  out  his  soul  upon  him  or  about 
him. 

He  had  been  in  high  position  among  his  people. 
Through  years  of  peace  he  had  led  them  to  the 
house  of  God,  with  the  voice  of  joy  and  praise, 
a  multitude  that  kept  holy  day.  But  cruel  and  un- 
just men  had  torn  him  from  the  sacred  habits  and 
fellowship,  which  had  sustained  him,   and,  as  it 

^  An  Address  chiefly  delivered  to  soldiers  of  the  United 
States  Army. 

209 


210  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

seemed,  from  God  Himself.  They  stabbed  him 
with  their  taunts  of  this:  as  with  a  sword  in  my 
bones  mine  enemies  reproach  me,  saying  daily 
unto  me,  Where  is  thy  God?  Indeed  his  own 
thoughts  conspired  with  them :  /  say  unto  God 
my  Rock,  Why  hast  Thou  forgotten  me?  And 
the  strange  scenery  that  surrounded  him  was  in 
the  conspiracy  too.  In  the  far  corner  of  the 
country  to  which  he  was  banished,  the  land  of  Jor- 
dan and  the  huge  Hermons,  where  the  rains  are 
violent  and  the  waterfalls  roar  down  the  steep 
hills,  all  these  things  seemed  to  re-echo  and 
to  swell  the  floods  of  his  grief:  deep  calleth 
unto  deep  at  the  noise  of  Thy  cataracts:  all  Thy 
waves  and  Thy  breakers  are  gone  over  me!  He 
was  drenched,  deafened,  and  buffeted  by  sorrow. 

But  in  this  threefold  refrain  he  turns  on  the 
coward  in  himself,  challenges  his  doubting  soul, 
and  recovers  his  courage — the  health  of  my 
countenance  and  my  God. 

I  come  to  you  from  a  people  who,  during  the 
last  four  years,  have  required  every  ounce  of  cour- 
age they  could  command.  For,  to  begin  with, 
their  faith  was  shocked  by  the  most  sudden  and 
treacherous  assault  on  the  peace  of  the  world,  the 
most  impious  conspiracy  between  brute  force  and 


COURAGE  AND  ITS  THREE  SOURCES    211 

arrogant  intellect  which  history  records.  And 
then,  and  since  then,  they  have  had  constant  ex- 
perience of  an  incredible  faithlessness  and  cruelty 
on  the  part  of  a  people  calling  itself  Christian 
and  boasting  the  superiority  of  its  culture.  In  the 
interview  with  which  he  honoured  me,  your  own 
President  said:  "For  four  years  I  have  been 
schooling  myself  in  the  incredible  till  it  has  become 
terribly  familiar  to  me."  That  is  the  feeling  of 
every  civilised  man  outside  Germany.  German 
policy  and  German  conduct,  unblushingly  acknowl- 
edged by  German  lips,  have  staggered  us.  Sheer 
crime  has  been  avowed  as  a  necessity.  Weak 
peoples  have  been  told  that  their  weakness  has  no 
rights,  and  strong  peoples  that  the  mere  will  to 
war  is  the  proof  of  strength  and  sanction  suffi- 
cient for  designs,  however  unjust,  upon  the  rest 
of  mankind.  We  had  to  face  these  forces,  which 
for  more  than  a  generation  had  been  preparing 
themselves  for  this  outbreak — we  had  to  face 
them,  ourselves  unprepared.  And  we  knew  our 
unpreparedness.  We  had  to  expect  in  consequence 
retreat  and  defeat,  and  these  and  many  disasters 
have  come  upon  us  one  after  another.  There  was 
the  retreat  from  Mons,  the  defeat  of  the  only 
force  we  had  ready.    There  were  the  failure  and 


212  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

the  awful  losses  at  Gallipoli,  the  failure  and  the 
surrender  In  Mesopotamia.  All  our  resources, 
physical  and  moral,  have  been  strained  to  the 
breaking  point.  Our  sons  have  fallen  in  hundreds 
of  thousands,  till  love,  the  heart  of  courage,  has 
almost  been  drowned  in  sorrow.  Pity  and  indig- 
nation, those  fine  tributaries  to  courage,  have  been 
stunned  by  the  endless  recurrence  of  atrocities 
upon  atrocities.  Sometimes,  too,  Providence  has 
seemed  so  indifferent  to  the  war  and  its  welter  of 
suffering,  so  blind  to  the  crimes  which  have  caused 
It  that  some  could  cry  with  the  Psalmist:  Why 
has  Thou  forgotten  me,  why  go  I  mourning  he- 
cause  of  the  oppression  of  the  enemy? 

Such  have  been  our  trials  and  our  agonies,  and 
I  am  come  to  tell  you  who  are  drawing  after  us 
into  them,  and  who  will  have  need  of  the  same 
courage,  what,  with  the  Psalmist,  we  have  found 
the  sources  of  courage  to  be.  Simply  and  defi- 
nitely they  are  these  three — a  just  cause,  a  clean 
heart,  and  faith  in  God. 


Judge  me,  O  God,  and  plead  my  cause  against 
an  ungodly  nation!    The  Germans  have  appealed 


COURAGE  AND  ITS  THREE  SOURCES    213 

to  a  national  deity;  we  know  no  other  God  than 
the  Judge  of  the  whole  earth,  and  we  have  to 
plead  to  Him,  not  ourselves — for  we  know  our 
unfitness  to  be  His  instruments — nor  our  race,  nor 
any  powers  He  may  have  given  us,  but  just  our 
Cause.  How  righteous  that  Cause  is  I  have  tried 
to  show  in  other  addresses,  and  mainly  through 
the  mouths  of  German  witnesses.  The  Chancel- 
lor's avowal  of  crime  in  the  invasion  of  Belgium; 
the  instinct  we  had  from  the  first,  and  which  every 
phase  of  German  policy  and  war  has  confirmed 
and  articulated,  that  this  was  only  one  item  in  a 
general  defiance  of  the  moral  law,  a  reckless,  un- 
limited design  on  the  freedom  and  rights  of  all 
other  peoples;  again,  our  sense  of  duty  to  a  nation 
we  had  sworn  to  defend  and  whom  Germany, 
equally  sworn  with  ourselves,  had  betrayed;  again, 
the  contradiction  between  her  arrogant  claims  to 
impose  her  culture  on  mankind,  put  forth  when 
she  seemed  to  be  victorious,  and  her  cries,  when 
things  went  against  her,  that  she  was  fighting  only 
in  self-defence;  again,  her  further  perjuries  to 
Russia;  again  her  responsibility,  as  her  own  sons 
have  told  us,  for  the  Armenian  massacres,  and 
her  efforts  to  stir  the  Moslem  world  to  a  "holy 
war"  against  the  Christians  opposed  to  her;  and 


214  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

again,  the  long  ghastly  succession  of  her  atrocities 
on  sea  and  on  land — all  these  are  facts  which  have 
made  clear  to  us,  as  they  certainly  will  make  clear 
to  posterity,  the  sure  and  urgent  justice  of  our 
Cause. 

On  this  from  the  very  first  we  have  based  any 
courage  we  have  had.  Through  the  shock  and 
confusion  of  the  outbreak  of  war  (as  I  have  else- 
where pointed  out)  ,^  the  narrow  but  signal  line 
of  our  duty  to  Belgium  was  what  we  rallied  upon. 
That  duty  united  us  as  nothing  else  could  have 
done,  and  steeled  the  national  heart  under  the 
trembling  sense  of  our  unpreparedness  for  it. 
And  the  increasing  manifestation  of  the  justice 
for  which  we  were  fighting — through  every  fresh 
exposure  of  the  aims  and  conduct  of  our  foes — has 
been  to  us  a  daily  source  of  courage  since.  Noth- 
ing but  a  bare  sense  of  right  brought  us  through 
the  many  dark  months  we  had  to  live.  Nothing 
else  could  have  rendered  possible  the  willing  sac- 
rifices of  our  sons  upon  the  field;  or  united  their 
people  behind  them  to  those  belated,  but  when 
they  came  enormous,  preparations,  by  which,  to 
our  own  surprise,  we   at  last  reached  material 

^Pp.  156-159. 


COURAGE  AND  ITS  THREE  SOURCES    215 

equality  with  the  forty  years'  preparations  of  the 
foe. 

Soldiers  of  the  United  States,  you  have  this  firm 
ground  of  courage  to  march  out  upon.  Never 
were  men  called  to  fight  for  a  better  cause.  You 
may  march,  you  may  fight,  you  may  suffer  and  die 
without  a  single  misgiving  as  to  its  quality.  There 
is  nothing  disreputable  here.  You  follow  no 
tyrants,  seek  no  material  gain  or  glory  for  your 
country,  hunt  no  selfish  ends  of  your  own.  Your 
flag,  the  flag  of  freedom  and  of  union,  is  raised 
only  for  the  rights  of  the  weak,  for  the  re- 
demption of  the  oppressed,  for  justice,  liberty,  and 
peace — peace  that,  whether  it  be  granted  or  de- 
nied to  yourselves,  shall  at  least  by  your  sacrifices 
become  secure  for  the  generations  after  you. 


But  even  a  just  cause  is  without  avail  if  the 
fighters  for  it  fail  to  bring  it  clean  and  honest 
hearts.  The  firmest  ground  has  no  firmness  to 
feet  unsteady  in  themselves.  The  credit  of  the 
strongest  cause  to  which  a  man  may  attach  him- 
self is  not  available  for  his  private  debts;  nor  can 
the  holiest  crusade  turn  him  brave  of  whom  his 


216  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

own  conscience  still  makes  a  coward.  Primitive 
men  judged  it  fatal  to  serve  the  altar  with  strange 
fire.  And  you  and  I  must  know  that,  easy  as  it  is 
to  serve  a  cause,  whose  purity  is  strength  to  the 
honest  heart,  only  because  we  have  been  moved  by 
the  glamour  or  popularity  of  it,  no  real  strength 
can  come  to  us  personally  from  such  motives.  We 
must  be  worthy  of  it  in  ourselves  before  its  in- 
domitableness  can  become  our  individual  courage. 
And  we  can  be  worthy  of  it  only  by  being  clean. 

Collective  enthusiasm  in  a  just  cause  is  an  im-" 
mense  fortitude.  And  so  is  the  discipline  of  the 
ranks,  the  touch  of  shoulder  to  shoulder,  in  a  loyal 
comradeship.  But  war  above  all  things  tells  us 
that  there  is  another  side  to  the  shield.  By  wounds, 
by  disease,  by  the  sorrow  of  the  mother,  the  widow 
and  the  orphan,  by  the  last  loneliness  of  each  of 
its  million  deaths,  it  teaches  us  that  in  the  ultimate 
resort  courage  must  be  individual.  fVhy  art  thou 
cdst  down,  O  MY  soul! 

You  remember  what  Tennyson  makes  Sir  Gala- 
had say: — 

My  good  blade  carves  the  casques  of  men, 

My  tough  lance  thrusteth  sure, 
My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten, 

Because  my  heart  is  pure. 


COURAGE  AND  ITS  THREE  SOURCES    217 

St.  Paul  puts  it  better  when,  In  recounting  tlie 
pieces  of  the  whole  armour  of  God,  he  tells  us  to 
put  on  the  breastplate  of  righteousness.  In  other 
words,  the  best  breastplate  is  a  clean  breast — a 
pure  heart,  a  heart  at  peace  with  God  and  man, 
the  will  to  think  of  others  and  to  serve  them  and 
not  oneself — the  unselfish  mind  that  was  in  Christ. 
He  who  has  these,  whatever  be  his  natural  nerve, 
can  rely  on  himself,  can  be  sure  that  he  will  not 
flinch  in  emergencies  nor  give  way  in  danger  nor 
in  face  of  death.  And  as  St.  Paul  tells  us — though 
we  do  not  need  to  be  told  for  we  have  the  witness 
within — we  have  these  not  of  ourselves.  There  is 
not  one  of  us  whose  past  will  let  him  wholly  trust 
himself.  But  God  can  give  these  through  Jesus 
Christ  our  Lord.  There  is  none  so  soiled,  so 
stunted,  so  weakened  by  self-indulgence,  so  dis- 
turbed by  passion,  so  little  able  to  trust  himself, 
but  by  turning  in  penitence  to  God  may  receive  that 
pardon  of  which  the  most  ethical  content  is  not 
even  freedom,  but  the  assurance  that  God  trusts 
him  once  more  for  Christ's  sake,  and  sends  him 
back  to  duty  and  to  trial,  strong,  indebted,  and 
dedicated. 

A  young  French  soldier  has  put  it  well:  **I 
shall  fight  with  a  good  conscience  and  without  fear, 


218  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

I  hope,  certainly  without  hate,  because  I  believe 
our  cause  to  be  just.  ...  I  am  confident  our 
cause  is  just  and  good  and  that  we  have  right  on 
our  side."  But  "we  must  search  our  hearts  to  see 
whether  we  can  fight,  whether  we  are  sufliciently 
in  love  with  the  Justice  that  must  be  established 
afterwards.  .  .  .  We  take  the  oath  of  alle- 
giance. Lord;  we  will  work  to  bring  about  Thy 
Kingdom."^ 


But  a  just  cause  and  a  clean  heart  are  not  enough 
without  faith  in  God.  For  the  justice  is  His,  and 
triumphs  because  God  reigns  and  judges.  And 
His,  too,  is  the  power  to  forgive  and  make  clean 
and  trusty  our  hearts  within  us.  So  this  Psalm, 
which  opens  with  longing  for  God  Himself,  comes 
back  to  Him  again  through  all  its  debate  and  its 
trouble.  Turning  on  his  coward  soul,  the  Psalmist 
lifts  her  to  God  and  leaves  her  with  Him. 

Why  art  thou  cast  do'un,  O  my  soul? 
And  why  art  thou  disquieted  within  me? 

Or,  as  we  may  more  nearly  render  the  original, 
*See  above,  pp.  lOO,  107-111. 


COURAGE  AND  ITS  THREE  SOURCES    219 

Why  dost  thou  give  in,  O  my  soul. 
And  be  moaning  upon  me? 

Why  give  in!  However  hard  be  the  war,  and 
triumphant  the  foe,  God  is  and  reigns,  God  of 
the  Right,  and  even  my  God,  so  far  as  I  hold  to 
the  Right,  and  prove  worthy  of  It. 

Hold  thou  to  God,  for  I  shall  yet  praise  Him, 
The  health  of  my  countenance  and  my  God. 

The  health,  or  victory,  of  my  countenance — 
it  is  a  true  version  of  the  Hebrew  idiom,  but  in 
our  language  It  sounds  vague,  and  probably  our 
tongues  have  slipped  over  It  many  a  time  without 
our  hearts  understanding  what  it  means.  Yet  it 
just  means  health,  or  victory,  of  my  face.  What 
enables  me  to  face  up  to  things — to  face  up  to 
duty,  to  face  up  to  danger,  to  face  up  to  death, 
unquivering,  undistracted — in  short  my  courage. 

Hold  thou  to  God,  for  I  shall  yet  praise  Him, 
My  Courage  and  my  God. 

My  Courage  and  my  God!  But  what,  O  men, 
is  this,  but  Jesus  Christ  Himself,  at  once  the  deep- 
est source  and  the  supreme  example  of  courage. 
The  deepest  source,  for  He  can  pardon  me  peni- 
tent, through  pardon  give  me  trust  again  In  myself, 
and  assure  me  as  none  else  can,  of  the  Love  and 


220  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

Faithfulness  of  God  Almighty.  And  the  supreme 
example  of  Courage — Who  in  our  flesh,  and 
tempted  in  all  points  as  we  are,  endured  the  con- 
tradiction of  sinners  against  Himself,  braved 
spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places,  faced  agony, 
wounds  and  death,  to  the  perfect  sacrifice  of  Him- 
self for  His  fellow-men. 


These,  then,  are  the  three  secrets  of  Courage 
— a  just  cause,  a  clean  heart,  and  faith  in  God. 
We  have  yet  another — the  example  of  those, 
mostly  your  own  contemporaries,  who  have  pre- 
ceded you  in  this  warfare,  and  have  been  brave  to 
death  itself.  The  innumerable  host  of  them  who 
have  fallen  have  left  their  battle  to  you,  unfinished 
in  sacred  trust.  See  that  trust,  sealed  with  their 
blood,  through  to  victory.  Can  anything  base, 
selfish,  timid  or  compromising  linger  in  your 
hearts,  as  you  think  of  their  faith,  their  love,  and 
their  full  sacrifice  1 

Hark  the  roar  grows  .  .  .  the  thunders  reawaken — 
We  ask  one  thing,  Lord,  only  one  thing  now: 

Hearts   high   as   theirs,   who   went   to   death    unshaken, 
Courage  like  theirs  to  make  and  keep  their  vow. 


EPILOGUE 


EPILOGUE 

AMERICA  AT  WAR 

In  the  introduction  to  this  volume  I  have  stated 
briefly  the  dates  and  circumstances  of  the  ad- 
dresses which  it  contains.  But  my  heart  cannot 
let  these  go  without  an  addition,  as  now  at  home 
it  goes  back  on  the  long  and  crowded  ways  upon 
which  it  travelled  with  them.  They  sought  to  tell 
of  Great  Britain's  share  in  the  war  and  to  deliver 
part  at  least  of  the  British  message  from  the  heart 
of  the  war  to  the  American  people.  But  my  mis- 
sion, of  course,  was  one  of  intake  as  well  as  of 
forthputting.  I  both  heard  what  America  had  to 
say,  and  saw  what  she  had  to  give,  to  her  Allies. 
So  here  I  propose  to  set  down  some  general  im- 
pressions which  the  United  States  at  war  have 
left  on  their  British  guest,  both  as  he  faced  large 
gatherings  of  their  citizens  and  spoke  to  them, 
and  as  he  listened  to  their  representative  speakers' 
on  the  platform,  or  to  the  rest  of  the  talk  about 
the  war  which  filled  their  land  from  one  far  end 

223 


224  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

to  the  other.  Across  that  continent  our  experience 
was  thronged  with  incidents  and  personal  relations 
of  the  highest  interest.  For  all  these  I  can  only 
express  my  gratitude,  with  the  regret  that  public 
duty  so  strictly  curtailed  the  private  opportunities 
which  were  generously  opened  to  me. 

The  impression  which  most  steadily  grew  upon 
the  visitor  to  the  States  was  that  of  the  practical 
unanimity  of  opinion  on  the  character  of  the  war 
— at  least  of  all  opinion  which  had  the  confidence 
to  utter  itself.  The  large  number  of  public 
speakers  with  whom  I  had  the  honour  of  address- 
ing the  conferences  and  mass  meetings  (some  of 
whose  names  I  give  below)  ^  are  examples  of  the 
devotion  of  leading  citizens  of  the  United  States 
to  the  task  of  informing  the  hundred  millions  of 
their  countrymen  upon  the  moral  issues  of  the  war. 

1  Ex-President  Taft,  the  Hon.  Alton  B.  Parker;  the 
Hon.  Theodore  Marburg  and  Mr.  Morgenthau,  for- 
merly U.  S.  Ministers  to  Brussels  and  Constantinople  re- 
spectively; several  State  Judges  and  University  and  Col- 
lege Presidents,  Chancellors,  Deans  and  Professors; 
several  Bishops  and  many  chairmen  of  Chambers  of  Com- 
merce, mercantile  and  civic  clubs,  and  local  federations 
of  ministers  of  religion — the  latter  including  a  number  of 
coloured  pastors  in  the  south.  Of  all  these  I  spoke  most 
with  Mr.  Marburg,  Dr.  H.  C.  King,  Dr.  N.  Boynton, 


EPILOGUE  225 

Whether  upon  America's  duty  to  the  war,  or  on 
the  international  relations  which  should  follow  it, 
none  of  these  speakers  gave  forth  an  uncertain 
sound — and  the  same  is  true  of  the  series  of  ad- 
dresses which  we  had  the  privilege  of  hearing  on 
the  voyage  home  from  editors  of  the  principal 
American  journals  and  reviews.  Again,  during 
the  five  months  I  was  in  the  States  I  read  leading 
articles  in  from  sixty-five  to  seventy  different  daily 
papers  of  all  shades  of  politics;  and  found  them, 
while  frequently  criticising  the  Government,  al- 
ways striking  the  same  notes  of  the  urgent  justice 
of  the  Allied  cause  and  of  America's  duty — and 
striking  them  with  clearness  and  force.  My  ex- 
perience was  similar  in  listening  to  conversations 
in  what  has  been  called  "the  most  general  forum 
of  popular  discussion"  in  America,  the  smoking 
cars,  on  my  long  railway  journeys.  In  these 
numerous  and  prolonged  conversations  I  never 
heard  but  one  opinion  expressed,  and  vigorously 
expressed.    In  talking  elsewhere  with  business  and 

and  Dr.  Lynch.  I  had  also  the  honour  of  speaking  along 
with  M.  Jusserand,  the  French  Ambassador,  Col.  Azan 
of  the  French  Military  Mission,  Lieut.  Le  Man  of  the 
Belgian  Army,  and  Mr.  P.  D.  Wilson,  New  York 
representative  of  the  "Daily  News." 


226  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

professional  men  I  found  that  while  most  of  them 
had  sympathised  with  the  Allies  from  the  first, 
some  had  felt  doubts  and  some  had  had  a  strong 
prejudice  for  Germany,  but  only  till  America 
entered  the  war.  Now  they  were  all  of  one  mind 
without  reservations. 

I  had  the  honour  of  being  invited  by  the 
Speaker  to  address  the  House  of  Representatives 
in  the  Legislature  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts. 
I  spoke,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  they  listened, 
with  memories  of  all  that  Boston  has  stood  for  in 
America's  case  against  Britain.  But  their  cordial 
reception  of  the  British  message  was  another 
proof  of  the  common  conscience  of  our  peoples 
and  of  the  American  unanimity  on  the  justice  of 
our  cause.  The  same  proof,  but  on  a  larger  scale, 
was  given  by  the  Great  Convention  in  Philadelphia 
in  May,  called  by  the  "League  to  Enforce  Peace" 
by  winning  the  war,  and  presided  over  by  Mr.  W. 
H.  Taft.  Three  thousand  delegates  from  all  the 
States  in  the  Union  enthusiastically  applauded  the 
call  to  the  duty  of  concentrating  the  national  ef- 
forts and  resources  on  the  war  as  the  only  way  to 
secure  the  freedom  and  the  peace  of  the  world — 
a  call  that  rang  throughout  the  proceedings  from 
the  Chairman's  opening  address  to  the  closing  ban- 


EPILOGUE  227 

quets  at  which  he  spoke  for  America,  Ambassador 
Jusserand  for  France,  and  (in  the  absence  of 
Lord  Reading)  I  for  the  British  people.  The 
popular  convictions  and  enthusiasm  which  this 
Convention  expressed  received  official  endorse- 
ment, no  less  hearty,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Gov- 
ernors of  the  States  held  at  the  same  time,  and 
also  under  the  presidency  of  Mr.  Taft. 

Of  course  there  were  and  are  in  the  United 
States,  as  in  Great  Britain,  those  of  another  opin- 
ion. But  they  are  more  silent  in  America  than 
here,  and  the  public  show  less  tolerance  with 
them.  One  discovery  of  this  was  interesting.  A 
citizen  of  a  large  town  in  the  Middle  West  showed 
me  beneath  his  coat  a  badge,  which  marked  him 
as  one  of  a  group  of  citizens,  voluntarily  and 
secretly  organised  to  detect  and  expose  to  the 
authorities  any  whom  they  found  talking  treason 
to  the  nation's  conscience  of  its  duty;  and  it  was 
said  that  there  were  similar  groups  in  other  cities. 
The  trials  of  "conscientious  objectors"  and  of 
unpatriotic  agitators,  with  the  verdicts  and  sen- 
tences passed  on  them,  were  also  significant  of  the 
national  temper.  I  found  some  audiences — few 
indeed — somewhat  heavier  to  lift  than  others,  and 
was  told  afterwards  that  they  contained  a  consid- 


228  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

erable  proportion  of  "pacifists".  This  happened 
chiefly  in  parts  of  the  country  where  there  is  a 
vogue  for  religious  theories  that  tend,  through 
false  ideas  of  the  Divine  Will,  to  weaken  man's 
sense  of  his  own  responsibility  for  justice  and  the 
betterment  of  the  world.  We  were  seldom  inter- 
rupted by  objectors — once,  I  think,  on  the  question 
of  Ireland,  but  before  we  knew  what  they  wished 
to  say  they  were  (to  our  disappointment) 
promptly  ejected  by  the  audience.  The  messages 
of  my  fellow-speakers  and  myself  (I  hope)  were 
delivered  with  sobriety  and  restraint,  yet  the  con- 
sent to  what  we  said  was  always  enthusiastic  and 
in  some  cases  its  expression  was  overwhelming. 
Of  the  two  related  subjects  on  which  I  was 
charged  to  speak,  the  moral  aims  common  to  the 
Allies  and  the  British  part  in  the  war,  I  found 
less  need  for  the  first  than  for  the  second.  As 
has  often  been  said  both  by  themselves  and  by 
others,  Americans,  with  all  their  supposed  absorp- 
tion in  the  material  interests  of  life,  are  a  nation 
of  idealists.  They  have  been  so  from  the  begin- 
ning. The  nation  came  into  being  for  an  ideal; 
and  the  spirit  of  its  Declaration  of  Independence 
and  of  other  utterances  during  the  War  of  Inde- 
pendence is  hard  to  distinguish  from  that  of  the 


EPILOGUE  229 

contemporary  idealists  of  France.  Though  much 
of  the  immigration  which  has  constantly  aug- 
mented the  population  has  been  due  to  material 
attractions,  there  have  always  gleamed  over  these 
attractions,  as  there  have  been  signal  to  the  minds 
of  all  the  other  immigrants,  high  ideals  of  free- 
dom and  equality.  To-day  this  national  spirit  has 
found  consummate  expression  in  the  pronounce- 
ments of  President  Wilson.  But  American  ideal- 
ism is  not  abstract.  It  has  a  practical  edge  upon 
it,  and  a  personal  passion  driving  behind  the  edge, 
not  excelled  by  other  nations.  Up  to  a  point  the 
Americans  are  the  most  patient  and  amiable  of 
peoples.  But  let  the  point  be  passed  and  not  even 
the  French  will  outdo  them  in  the  logical  thorough- 
ness and  eager,  stern  temper  in  which  they  will  en- 
force these  ideals.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
American  temper  is  vindictive;  but  where  its  ideals 
of  freedom  are  menaced  and  in  real  danger — and 
where  the  menacing  forces  have  violated  in  addi- 
tion the  sanctity  of  the  home  and  have  outraged 
women  and  children — then  American  idealism  be- 
comes relentless  and  implacable.  That  is  the 
spirit  Germany  has  to  encounter  in  the  American 
soldier,  and  that  is  the  spirit  I  have  found  resolute 
in  his  people  behind  him. 


230  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

Among  Germany's  most  fatal  blunders  has 
been  her  failure  to  appreciate  all  this.  In  essence 
the  moral  aim  of  America  at  war  is  just  that  of 
her  Allies.  But  it  is  somewhat  differently  set  from 
theirs.  We  British  had  our  definite  and  sworn 
duty  to  Belgium  to  concentrate  and  inflame  us; 
behind  that  our  instincts  of  danger  to  our  Empire 
and  its  free  institutions.  To  France  there  was 
the  immediate  and  urgent  task  of  repelling  in- 
vasion; behind  that  the  hope  of  recovering  her 
lost  provinces.  Italy  also  had  concrete  aims,  the 
recovery  of  territories  and  populations  properly 
her  own.  And  Belgians,  Serbs  and  Montenegrins 
have  been  fighting  for  their  soil  and  the  restora- 
tion of  their  banished  peoples.  But  while  all  these 
objectives  of  our  warfare  have  been  unselfishly 
adopted  by  the  Americans,  their  ultimate  target 
has  been  the  autocracy  itself,  whose  power  and 
ambition  were  the  primal,  if  not  the  sole,  causes 
of  the  wrongs  the  Allies  were  called  to  redress. 
The  Americans  have  aimed  at  this  target  with  a 
straighter  vision,  at  least,  than  the  other  Allied 
powers.  In  the  President's  words  their  purpose  is 
"to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy".  As  one 
went  through  the  country  one  heard  this  and  simi- 
larly absolute  phrases  repeated  again  and  again. 


EPILOGUE  231 

Now  in  years  of  peace  such  phrases — even  with 
the  piquancy  added  to  them  of  America's  tradi- 
tional suspicion  and  contempt  for  all  dynasties — 
felt  monotonously  abstract.  So  long  as  democracy 
was  not  threatened  In  America  herself,  and 
America  had  neither  the  power  nor  the  concern 
to  enforce  it  in  Europe,  American  persistence  in 
repeating  its  maxims  seemed  futile;  and  It  was 
easy  to  caricature  them  as  Charles  Dickens  did. 
When,  however,  the  American  as  well  as  other 
democracies  fell  under  real  danger — when  It  was 
seen  that  Germany  was  making  the  world  unsafe 
for  democracy — and  at  the  same  time  America 
felt  herself  able  to  strike  as  far  as  Europe,  then 
her  Ideals  took  the  form  of  a  most  practical  pas- 
sion and  their  enforcement  to  the  very  letter  of  her 
phrasing  of  them  became  certain.  A  frequent 
signal  of  that  temper  which  we  heard  was  the  say- 
ing— "It  is  this  wretched  kaiser-business  that  Is 
responsible  for  the  war,  and  it  must  be  put  an 
end  to". 

From  Count  Bernstorff's  and  his  master's  con- 
temptuous references  to  the  American  Govern- 
ment and  people  on  to  even  Prince  Max's  first 
communication  to  the  President,  Germany's  stupid 
blindness  to  all  this  has  been  very  obvious  to  those 


232  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

who  know  the  Americans.  It  will  be  regarded  as 
one  of  "the  curiosities  of  history"  that  Imperial 
Germany,  from  whatever  motive,  should  have  ad- 
dressed her  appeal  for  peace  to  that  power  among 
those  opposed  to  her  whose  purpose  was  most 
directly  hostile  to  her  autocratic  genius  and  con- 
stitution, and  who  at  the  same  time  was  most 
familiar  with  the  intrigues  and  falsehoods  of  her 
diplomacy.  But  President  Wilson's  replies  to 
Prince  Max  must  at  last  have  roused  Germans  to 
the  truth,  that  among  all  the  Allies  the  American 
spirit  strikes  straightest  at  the  heart  of  what  the 
world  has  come  to  know  as  Germanism;  and  that 
American  vision,  sharpened  by  two  and  a  half 
years'  experience  of  German  fraud,  is  at  least  not 
less  likely  than  that  of  the  other  Allies  to  be  on 
guard  in  negotiations  with  a  people  whom  their 
own  conduct  has  rendered  so  suspect  and  untrust- 
worthy. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  task  with  which  I  was 
entrusted — to  relate  the  part  which  Great  Britain 
had  played  in  the  war — there  was  more  need  to 
enlarge.  The  magnitude  of  that  part  and  many  of 
its  details  were  either  unknown  or  imperfectly 
realised.  For  instance,  the  facts  that,  within  two 
years  from  her  sudden  call  to  war  and  before 


EPILOGUE  233 

conscription  was  fully  established,  Great  Britain 
had  increased  her  armies  from  a  few  hundreds 
of  thousands  to  nearly  five  millions;  that  these 
armies  had  to  fight  not  on  one  front  only 
but  on  seven  or  eight  in  three  different  con- 
tinents; or  the  distance  from  home  of  some 
of  these  fronts;  or  the  size  and  severity  of 
the  operations  upon  them;  or  the  number 
from  first  to  last  of  British  casualties.  There 
was,  too,  great  eagerness  to  hear  how  we  con- 
veyed, fed  and  equipped  our  forces,  and  how  they 
were  served  by  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps 
and  Red  Cross;  how  Great  Britain  financed  her- 
self and  her  Allies,  and  carried  on  other  necessary 
organisations  behind  the  fighting  lines.  It  was 
a  simple  task  to  tell  all  this.  Facts  and  figures 
told  themselves.^  But  the  impression  they  pro- 
duced, often  rising  to  amazement,  showed  how 

^  I  was  much  indebted  to  the  Department  of  Informa- 
tion of  the  British  Foreign  Office,  in  particular  to  Pro- 
fessor MacNeile  Dixon  there,  and  to  the  British  Pic- 
torial Service  in  New  York  under  Geoffrey  Butler,  Esq., 
for  the  literature,  statistics,  and  other  information  with 
which  they  provided  me.  We  found  frequent  proofs  all 
over  the  States  of  the  value  of  the  literature  on  the 
British  aims  and  results,  distributed  by  Professor  Mac- 
Neile Dixon. 


234  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

necessary  the  telling  was.  The  first  month  of  my 
tour  was  the  time  when  the  Third  Liberty  Loan 
was  being  raised,  and  the  example  of  the  subscrip- 
tions of  British  towns  to  our  own  last  Government 
Loan  was  not  without  Its  Influence. 

But  while  there  was  need  for  such  detailed  in- 
formation It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  dele- 
gates to  America  from  a  people,  whether  British 
or  French,  who  have  endured  the  sacrifices  of 
these  terrible  years,  had  to  work  up  sympathy  In 
their  audiences.  Alike  in  the  East,  the  Middle 
West,  the  Far  West,  and  the  South,  the  sympathy 
was  spontaneous  and  immediate.  Chambers  of 
Commerce  and  other  gatherings  of  business  men 
were  as  moved  as  meetings  of  Church  workers, 
men  of  German  origin  as  much  as  Anglo-Saxons 
or  the  groups  of  Scots  whom  one  found  every- 
where. The  audiences  were  ready  to  receive  us 
with  heartiness  just  because  we  were  British  or 
French  or  Italian  or  Belgian.  It  was  a  novel  ex- 
perience to  hear  gatherings  of  American  people 
singing  "God  Save  the  King";  the  words  of  which 
were  in  many  cases  thoughtfully  distributed  among 
them  on  leaflets;  to  listen  to  choirs  trained  to  ren- 
der the  more  difficult  "Rule  Britannia";  and  to 
speak  from  platforms  on  which  the  Union  Jack 


EPILOGUE  235 

hung  side  by  side  with  the  Stars  and  Stripes — not 
to  speak  of  the  flags  and  national  anthems  of  the 
other  Allies.  The  Americans  are  a  generous 
people,  and  responded  at  once  to  what  my  fellow- 
speakers  said  of  the  British  and  French  contribu- 
tions to  our  common  cause.  The  finest  tribute  to 
Great  Britain's  part  in  the  war,  which  I  heard  or 
read,  was  made  by  Mr.  Taft  in  a  great  speech 
at  Cleveland,  Ohio,  listened  to  by  the  most  promi- 
nent men  and  women  of  that  city.  He  said,  in  so 
many  words,  that  America  could  never  repay  her 
debt  to  Britain,  and  his  words  were  warmly  ap- 
plauded. On  4th  August,  191 8,  the  anniversary 
of  the  British  entry  into  the  war,  ample  acknowl- 
edgment was  made  in  the  daily  papers  and  from 
the  pulpits  of  the  country  of  the  critical  and  de- 
cisive consequences  of  that  entry.  The  following 
extracts  from  a  leading  article  may  be  regarded 
as  typical : — ^ 

"Because  England  weighed  a  promise  and 
not  the  price  of  keeping  it,  there  could  be  no 
swift  stroke  at  lone  France,  no  dash  eastward 
to  subdue  Russia.    .    .    . 

"England's  day  this?    Yes,  and  a  glorious 
^  "The  Sun,"  New  York,  Sunday,  4th  August,  19 18. 


236  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

anniversary  for  her.    She  has  indeed  kept  her 
'solid  engagement  to  do  her  utmost'.     In  a 
million  graves  are  men  of  the  British  Empire, 
who  did  not  consider  the  price  at  which  the 
compact  would  be  kept.  Their  lives  for  a  scrap 
of  paper — and   welcome !      When   we   think 
that  we  are  winning  the  war — and  nobody  de- 
nies that  it  is  American  men  and  food  and  ships 
and  guns  that  are  winning  it  now — let  us  look 
back  to  the  4th  of  August,  19 14,  and  remem- 
ber what  nation  it  was  that  stood  between  the 
beast  and  his  prey,  scorning  all  his  false  offers 
of  kindness  to  Belgium,  his  promises  not  to 
hate  France,  and  his  hypocritical  cry  of  'kin- 
dred nation'  to  the  England  he  really  hated. 
"But  it  is  not  alone  England's  day.    .    .    . 
It  is  the  anniversary  of  Germany's  loss  of 
the  war." 
To  one  who  has  known  America  for  the  last 
twenty-five  years  all  these  signs — and  they  could 
be   indefinitely   multiplied — form   evidence   of   a 
change  in  the  attitude  and  temper  of  Americans 
towards   the   people   and   Government   of   Great 
Britain.    It  is  important  to  notice  that  the  change 
is  not  due  to  a  revival  of  considerations  of  blood 
or  language  or  even  community  of  political  heri- 


EPILOGUE  237 

tage,  but  rests  far  more  happily  on  a  common 
conscience  and  a  community  of  ideals.  We  heard 
little  these  months  of  an  "Anglo-Saxon  Alliance" 
or  a  "League  of  English-speaking  peoples".  As 
the  years  go  on  less  and  less  stress  can  be  laid  on 
the  physical  kinship  of  us  British  to  the  people 
of  the  United  States.  The  proportion  of  gen- 
uine "Anglo-Saxons"  to  the  mass  of  the  popula- 
tion is  steadily  diminishing.  The  mingling  of 
races  and  bloods  in  the  United  States  is  a  more 
wonderful  commonplace  than  ever.  To  our  minds 
it  was  brought  home  in  several  vivid  ways.  In 
the  lists  of  drafted  men  published  in  the  papers 
of  each  district  the  sum  of  English,  Scottish,  and 
Irish  names  would  be  conspicuously  less  than  the 
sum  of  German,  Jewish,  Italian,  Polish,  Russian 
and  other  Slavonic  names.  In  camps  and  troop- 
ships numbers  of  soldiers  would  look  at  you  with 
the  same  blue  eyes,  round  faces  and  fair  hair  that 
you  were  familiar  with  on  the  German  prisoners 
in  France.  Again,  I  remember,  that  when  we 
were  passing  through  Arizona  a  journal  gave  the 
"foreign-born"  groups,  which  the  Mayor  of  a 
small  town  was  adding  to  the  Committee  for  the 
celebration  of  Independence  Day.  No  fewer  than 
fourteen  different  nationalities  were  represented. 


238  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

But  these  are  not  all.  On  a  schedule  attached  to 
our  steamer  tickets  were  the  names  of  the  nations, 
from  one  or  other  of  which  the  American  pas- 
senger had  to  declare  he  was  derived,  and  those 
names  are  over  forty — nearly  as  many  nations  as 
there  are  States  In  the  Union.  It  is  the  richest 
mixture  of  nations  that  history  knows.  Though 
it  carries  the  people  further  from  the  cradle  we 
shared  with  them,  we  British  cannot  grudge  it. 
We  ourselves,  in  a  smaller  way,  are  a  mixture  too. 
The  strength  and  quality  of  our  genius  depend  on 
the  fact  that  we  are  not  only  Anglo-Saxons — 
praise  be  to  God! — but  Norse  and  Norman, 
French,  Celtic,  and  much  else  beside.  We  should 
contemplate  the  ethnic  experiment  in  the  United 
States,  on  a  vastly  larger  scale,  with  a  hopeful- 
ness justified  by  our  own  experience  and  more 
than  sufficient  to  compensate  for  the  rapid  disso- 
lution by  foreign  bloods  of  our  kinship  with  the 
American  people.  But  the  war  gives  both  them 
and  us  something  greater  still.  The  stern  sense 
and  the  strenuous  practice  of  their  duty  to  so  just 
a  cause  is  doing  more  to  consolidate  this  dazzling 
variety  of  peoples  into  one  nation  than  anything 
else  could  have  done.  And  not  only  for  both  our 
nations  is  it  far  more  precious  that  we  should  be 


EPILOGUE  239 

united  by  a  common  conscience  than  merely  by  ties 
of  blood  or  language;  but  it  is  also  far  better  for 
humanity  as  a  whole.  That,  through  the  greatest 
crisis  which  has  ever  fallen  on  civilisation,  we 
have  seen  with  one  eye,  and  have  fought,  suffered, 
and  our  sons  have  died,  together  for  the  Right  is 
the  pledge  not  only  that  our  Alliance  shall  endure, 
but  that  it  is  certain  to  secure  through  the  centuries 
the  moral  stability  and  peace  of  the  whole  world. 
But  this  fresh  spiritual  union  does  not  lose 
the  ancient  buttresses  of  a  common  language  and 
a  common  political  heritage.  Our  language  is  an 
invaluable  bond.  In  politics  the  service  has  been 
reciprocal.  Americans  are  fully  conscious  of  the 
debt  they  owe  to  England  and  Scotland  for  their 
political  principles  and  liberal  institutions;  and 
we  can  never  forget  the  lessons  of  liberty,  which 
they  taught  us  when  they  broke  from  our  tyran- 
nous monarchy,  and  which  we  have  laid  to  heart 
in  the  building  of  our  Empire.  I  encountered 
many  curious  instances  of  their  prejudice  against 
that  word  "Empire,"  and  endeavoured  to  show 
how  we  had  redeemed  it  from  its  evil  associations 
and  given  it  new  contents  and  a  new  spirit.  I  had 
also  some  pleasure  in  quoting  the  fact  that  George 
Washington  did  not  refuse  the  name  to  the  Ameri- 


240  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

can  Commonwealth,  as  when  he  called  himself 
"a  member  of  an  infant  Empire".*  The  truth  is 
that  the  spirit  and  form  of  the  British  Empire — 
that  commonwealth  of  independent  states  and 
semi-independent  territories — are  nearer  to  those 
of  the  great  Federal  Republic  than  are  even  the 
spirit  and  constitution  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
Sometimes  in  the  Western  States  we  had  ques- 
tions put  to  us  which  revealed  suspicions  as  to  the 
degree  and  quality  of  the  British  democracy.  It 
was  easy  to  answer  that  whatever  be  its  draw- 
backs, we  are,  in  some  directions  at  least,  more 
democratic  than  our  republican  kinsmen.  Neither 
in  State  nor  in  Church  nor  in  the  University  do 
our  constitutions  leave  so  much  power  to  individ- 
ual men.  Our  administration  is  not  so  indepen- 
dent of  Parliament  as  the  American  is  of 
Congress ;  the  American  caucuses  are  controlled  by 
"bosses"  of  a  power  hardly  known  to  us.  There 
are  more  labour  members  in  Parliament  than  in 
Congress.  Bishops  in  one  Protestant  Church 
seem  to  have  authority  peculiarly  drastic,  and 
some  College  Presidents  are  said  to  exercise 
powers  which,  if  their  British  equivalents  assumed 
them,  would  rouse  an  academic  revolution. 
^Letter  to  Lafayette,  15th  August,  1786. 


EPILOGUE  241 

I  was  asked  by  a  very  eminent  private  citizen, 
who  has  filled  one  of  the  highest  educational  posi- 
tions in  the  States  and  has  been  called  to  one  of 
the  most  important  of  their  political  posts, 
whether  "England  was  going  Socialist".  Scottco 
more  I  inquired  why  he  put  the  question.  He  an- 
swered, "Because,  if  it  does,  it  will  wreck  any 
British-American  alliance".  Whether  he  is  right 
or  wrong,  he  represents  an  attitude  toward  Social- 
ism held  by  many  Americans.  Socialism  has  less 
vogue  than  with  us.  That  is  partly  because  the 
position  of  the  wage-earners  is  more  comfortable, 
but  partly  also  because  the  American  conception 
of  freedom  is  at  least  as  jealous  for  the  rights  of 
the  individual  as  concerned  with  the  idea  of  equal- 
ity. Equality  of  opportunity  certainly,  but  leave 
the  individual  as  free  as  possible  in  his  use  of  the 
opportunity  and  in  his  enjoyment  of  the  results  of 
his  use. 

This  is  perhaps  one  of  the  lines  on  which  may  be 
found  the  answer  to  a  question  that  haunts  the 
British  visitor  to  America :  what  are  the  differences 
between  the  temper  of  our  democracy  and  that 
of  the  American?  One  may  be  this  individualism 
of  the   American   temper;    due   possibly  to   the 


242  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

greater  alertness  and  more  mobile  energy  of  the 
individual,  about  which  In  their  turn  It  would  be 
interesting  to  inquire  whether  the  climate  or  the 
greater  initiative  encouraged  in  children,  both  in 
their  families  and  at  school,  was  at  all  responsible 
for  them.  Another  difference  It  may  be  more  rash 
to  suggest — that  while  the  American  mind  Is  more 
rapt  away  by  the  Idea  of  Freedom,  we  British  are 
more  content  with  the  slower  steps  of  Justice. 
But  such  generalisations  are  precarious — and  after 
all  Freedom  and  Justice  are  parallel  infinites. 

Great  as  was  the  sympathy  and  even  enthusiasm 
with  which  the  British  message  and  record  were 
received  at  our  meetings,  I  am  bound  to  say  that 
the  sympathy  and  enthusiasm  for  the  name  of 
France  were.  If  possible,  still  greater.  In  the 
streets  the  Tricolor  was  more  lavish  than  the 
Union  Jack;  and  at  concerts  (though  there  was 
an  intrinsic  reason  also  for  this)  the  "Marseil- 
laise" was  greeted  more  heartily  than  "God  save 
the  King".  And  we  British  did  not  grudge  all 
this,  when  we  remembered  the  histories  of  those 
two  peoples — that  France  was  America's  first  ally, 
sending  troops  and  munitions  across  the  Atlantic 
as  America  is  now  sending  them  to  France;  how 


EPILOGUE  243 

disinterested  the  first  French  assistance  had  been/ 
and  how  effective  the  whole  of  it  proved  to  the 
achievement  of  victory;  how  American  Indepen- 
dence had  re-acted  for  the  freedom  of  France; 
how  intimate  and  affectionate  had  been  the  inter- 
course between  the  great  men  of  the  two  nations 
in  those  heroic  days;  and  that  to-day  both  states 
are  republics.  It  is  surely  natural  that  there 
should  be  in  America's  feeling  toward  France  a 
strain  of  an  even  more  tender  quality  than  in  her 
feelings  towards  ourselves.     After  all,  the  three 

^  In  his  recent  volume  "With  Americans  of  Past  and 
Present  Days"  (Scribner's  Sons,  191 7),  M.  Jusserand 
brings  out  great  evidence  of  this.  And  Frenchmen  dis- 
claimed any  wish  to  get  Canada  back  by  American  help. 
At  the  same  time  there  is  little  doubt  that  Louis  XVI's 
statesmen  hoped  to  take  great  advantage  at  sea  and  in 
commerce  by  the  American  success.  At  the  Philadelphia 
Banquet  of  the  League  to  Enforce  Peace  on  17th  May 
last,  M.  Jusserand  made  a  very  pretty  point.  He  read 
a  letter  from  a  general  at  the  front  dated  ist  May,  say- 
ing that  the  position  was  critical,  and  urging  that  all 
available  troops  be  sent  immediately  to  his  help  across 
the  Atlantic.  When  we  who  listened  felt  sobered  by 
this  appeal,  M.  Jusserand  quietly  said:  "Do  not  worry, 
it  is  true  that  the  date  of  the  letter  was  the  first  of  May, 
but  the  year  is  1781  and  the  writer  General  George 
Washington." 


244f  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

are  one  by  the  holiest  ties  of  duty  and  of  sacrifice, 
and  equally  appreciate  each  other's  spirit  and  ef- 
forts. The  question  of  Benjamin  Franklin  has 
been  answered  in  fact:  "What  would  you  think 
of  a  proposition  if  I  sh'd  make  it  of  a  family  com- 
pact between  England,  France,  and  America? 
America  would  be  as  happy  as  the  Sabine  girl  if 
she  could  be  the  means  of  uniting  in  perpetual 
peace  her  father  and  her  husband."^  The  com- 
pact is  made,  and  has  the  assurance  of  its  per- 
petuity in  the  community  of  moral  aims  on  which 
it  rests. 

To  their  Italian  Allies  the  sympathy  of  the 
Americans  has  gone  forth  possibly  in  a  less  demon- 
strative but  not  in  a  less  sincere  fashion  than  to 
the  French.  I  had  not  the  opportunity  of  hearing 
any  Italian  speakers,  but  the  most  interesting  spec- 
tacle I  witnessed  was  of  "Italian  Day"  in  New 
York,  the  anniversary  of  Italy's  entrance  into  the 
war.  For  most  of  Its  great  length  Fifth 
Avenue  was  lined  by  a  crowd  four  or  five  deep  of 
Italian  citizens  of  the  Republic  waving  the  colours 
of  their  fatherland,  their  children  seated  at  their 

^  To  David  Hartley,  one  of  the  British  plenipoten- 
tiaries for  the  peace,  dated  i6th  October,  1783;  quoted 
by  M.  Jusserand,  op.  cit.,  p.  348. 


EPILOGUE  245 

feet  on  the  kerbs  of  the  side-walks.  I  shall  never 
forget  the  lines  of  olive,  Tuscan  and  Roman  faces 
along  those  pavements  of  the  West.  New  York 
is  said  to  contain  an  Italian  population  as  large 
as  Rome. 

It  is  impossible  to  treat  with  adequacy  the  com- 
plexities of  the  domestic  German-American  situ- 
ation created  by  the  war.  Nothing  need  now  be 
said  of  the  careful  German  propaganda  in  the 
States  during  these  four  years,  and  long  before 
war  broke  out,  or  of  the  insidious  intrigue  and 
abuse  of  America's  hospitality,  or  of  the  violations 
of  their  new  allegiance  by  some  German  immi- 
grants, which  have  exasperated  the  Republic. 
Their  criminal  character  is  familiar,  though  per- 
haps not  to  the  same  degree,  to  every  nation  on 
which  Germany  had  set  her  calculating  eye.  But 
apart  from  these  outrages,  the  way  to  deal  with 
which  was  obvious  and  has  been  sternly  pursued, 
the  situation  of  Americans  of  German  origin  was 
one  peculiarly  involved  and  delicate.  The  Re- 
public could  not  forget  the  steadfast  and  often 
heroic  service  rendered  by  her  German  citizens 
to  the  cause  of  Union  throughout  the  Civil  War; 
yet  had  reason  to  be  anxious  about  the  attitude  of 
their  successors  in  the  very  different  crisis  of  to- 


246  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

day.  For  this  war  has  drawn  the  millions  of 
Americans  who  are  German  by  birth  or  descent 
into  a  hard  conflict  between,  on  the  one  side,  tra- 
dition and  natural  affection,  and,  on  the  other, 
their  new  allegiance  and  the  rights  of  a  cause 
whose  justice  was  acclaimed  by  the  rest  of  the 
civilised  world.  A  visit  to  the  States  is  bound  to 
create  a  sympathy  with  the  German  families  and 
individuals  who  must  have  felt  the  agony  of  that 
conflict;  as  well  as  to  give  the  capacity  of  appre- 
ciating the  honesty  and  courage  of  the  great  mass 
of  them  who  have  emerged  from  it  whole-hearted 
for  the  Allies — yet  not  with  hearts  wholly  healed 
as  they  see  to  what  the  people,  from  which  they 
have  been  proud  to  spring,  has  been  reduced  by 
its  own  conduct.    All  honour  to  them  I 

Next  to  the  anxiety  with  which  I  faced  my  first 
week  of  meetings — in  New  York  and  Philadel- 
phia— in  ignorance  still  of  the  precise  angle  at 
which  Americans  at  war  should  be  addressed,  was 
that  I  felt  on  approaching  the  principal  German 
centres  in  the  country.  But  it  was  needless.  The 
meetings  in  these  cities,  such  as  Cincinnati,  St. 
Louis  and  Milwaukee,  were  as  enthusiastic  as  else- 
where. Several  of  the  chairmen  were  of  German 
origin,  and  large  numbers  of  those  to  whom  we 


EPILOGUE  Ml 

were  introduced  bore  German  names.  But  they 
were  all  loyal  Americans,  and  spoke  for  or  cheered 
the  Allied  Cause  as  vigorously  as  their  fellow- 
countrymen.  The  Lichnowsky  Memorandum  had 
powerful  effects.  When  it  appeared  the  editors  of 
a  leading  German  paper  in  the  Middle  West 
acknowledged  that  they  had  been  misled  by  the 
authorities  and  journals  of  Berlin  and  announced 
that,  dropping  the  German  name  of  their  paper, 
they  would  henceforth  support  the  aims  of  the 
Allies.  Another  paper,  protesting  against  being 
classed  as  "un-American"  because  it  used  the  Ger- 
man language,  asserted  its  loyalty  to  "America's 
war-aims,"  without,  however,  referring  to  the 
other  Allies.  There  has  been  strong  controversy 
over  the  teaching  and  use  of  German,  the  strenu- 
ousness  of  the  hostility  to  which  we  cannot 
appreciate  unless  we  realise  conditions  that 
do  not  exist  among  ourselves.  In  the  State  of 
Nebraska,  for  example,  there  appear  to  have  been 
hundreds  of  schools  in  which  the  general  instruc- 
tion was  not  only  given  in  German,  but  was  in- 
spired by  German  traditions  and  ideals.  In  St. 
Louis  and  its  suburbs  there  are  twenty-eight 
Evangelical-Lutheran  churches,  twenty-eight  Ger- 
man-Evangelical   churches,    and    seventeen    Ger- 


S48  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

man-Catholic.  By  April  last  twenty-two  of  the 
"parish  schools"  of  the  first  named  had  discon- 
tinued instruction  in  German,  and  six  or  seven  of 
the  congregations  had  ceased  to  use  the  language 
in  their  services.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Catholic 
Archbishop,  affirming  that  no  complaint  of  dis- 
loyalty in  any  St.  Louis  church  had  reached  him, 
protested  that  "we  are  not  making  war  on  lan- 
guages but  on  false  principles,"  and  added  that 
"as  a  rule  only  one  of  the  Sunday  sermons  is  in 
German,"  but  "he  had  the  question  of  eliminating 
German  under  consideration."^  There  and  else- 
where some  churches  changed  their  names  from 
German  to  English.  It  is  said  that  the  number  of 
students  of  German  in  the  universities  has  seri- 
ously diminished.  These  things  show  how  far 
conditions  in  the  States  differ  from  those  in  Great 
Britain. 

Other  elements  in  America  at  war  deserve  our 
attention,  among  them  the  Negroes  and  the  Red 
Indians. 

I  had  the  privilege  of  speaking  to  audiences  of 
coloured  men  and  women  in  the  South  and  of 
hearing  several  of  their  speakers.     At  a  meeting 

^St.  Louis  "Post  Despatch,"  17th  April,  1918;  cf. 
"Denver  Post,"  Sunday,  21st  April. 


EPILOGUE  249 

In  New  Orleans  the  pastors  to  whom  we  were  in- 
troduced had  already  soldier  sons  in  France. 
There  are  separate  contingents  of  negroes  in  the 
American  forces;  and  a  number  of  commissions 
have  been  given  to  them.  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
telling  those  meetings  that  I  had  seen  men  of  their 
race  In  three  of  the  uniforms  of  the  Allies,  in  the 
British  khaki  a  West  Indian  Regiment,  in  the 
French  blue  a  Senegal  Regiment,  both  on  the  front 
in  France,  and  now  an  American  in  the  U.S.  uni- 
form. This  cannot  be  said  of  any  other  race 
save  the  Jews.  It  was  interesting  and  pathetic 
to  hear  negro  speakers  exhort  their  brothers  to 
support  the  Allied  Cause  as  "Anglo-Saxons"; 
which  term  they  justified  because  as  a  race  they 
had  never  known  any  civilisation  but  the  Anglo- 
Saxon,  and  this  war  was  one  for  its  Ideals  against 
the  pagan  ideals  and  policy  of  Germanism.  In 
this  crisis  the  coloured  communities  In  America 
have  the  same  conscience  as  the  white,  and  one 
heard  numerous  instances  of  their  fine  proof  of 
this  in  the  readiness  of  their  sons  to  fight,  and  of 
their  men  and  women  to  subscribe  to  the  Govern- 
ment Loans  and  the  Red  Cross.  The  zeal  of 
many  was  inflamed  by  the  evidence  of  how  the 


250  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

natives  in  Africa  have  been  treated  by  German 
colonists. 

The  Red-Indians  are  also  "on  the  warpath."  In 
the  States  there  are  fewer  than  33,000  males  of 
this  race  of  military  age,  but  by  May  "6000  of 
them  were  in  the  Army,  85  per  cent  of  whom  were 
volunteers,  and  several  hundred  more  in  the  Navy, 
every  one  a  full  citizen."^  They  are  found  in 
every  rank,  from  that  of  Major  downwards.  One 
company  of  the  142nd  Infantry  is  composed 
wholly  of  Choctaws,  all  volunteers.  We  saw 
several  Indian  sergeants  in  companies  of  white 
soldiers,  and  they  deserved  the  rank  both  for  their 
stalwart  frames  and  the  military  education  they 
had  previously  received  at  Government  Schools. 
"At  Camp  Travis  in  the  358th  Infantry  Regi- 
ment it  is  said  that  every  company  has  its  Indian 
non-commissioned  officers.  No  race  in  the  States 
has  a  better  Liberty  Bond  record  .  .  .  they  are 
not  the  wealthiest  people,  but  on  the  three  loans 
they  have  managed  to  subscribe  more  than  thir- 
teen million  of  dollars."     Their  engagement  in 

*  The  total  Indian  population  of  the  U.  S.  is  just  on 
336,000,  about  half  of  them  citizens,  50,000  still  in  skins 
and  blankets,  and  only  30  per  cent  able  to  read  and  write 
English.     (From  a  daily  paper.) 


EPILOGUE  251 

the  war  has  included  some  picturesque  incidents. 
In  Washington  and  Oregon  several  tribes  appealed 
to  a  clause  in  the  treaties  of  1854-5  by  which  they 
agreed  "never  to  make  war  against  any  other  tribe 
except  in  self-defence" ;  but  "when  Government  ex- 
plained that  this  really  was  a  war  of  self-defence 
they  decided  readily  enough  that  those  savage 
tribes  over  in  Germany  needed  the  Indian  sign 
more  than  the  Iron  Cross.'*  Another  tribe,  the 
Onondagas,  drew  up  a  declaration  of  war  against 
the  Kaiser  under  their  treaty  with  George  Wash- 
ington, which  made  them  a  separate  nation.  They 
took  this  step  because  of  the  indignities  inflicted 
by  the  Germans  on  some  of  their  tribe  taken 
prisoners.  The  race  has  already  rendered  its 
sacrifices  for  the  Cause,  and  in  Shawano  County 
and  other  districts  with  ancient  Indian  names,  aged 
women,  in  accordance  with  tribal  custom,  have 
been  wailing  for  their  men  fallen  in  France.^ 

We  had  frequent  opportunity  for  feeling  the 
weight  of  the  reasons  which  have  been  urged  for 
the  delay  of  America's  entry  into  the  war,  and 
which  even  kept  some  portions  of  her  population 
indifferent  to  our  Cause  for  a  year  thereafter. 
On  the  question,  whether  the  President  could  have 

*"New  York  Sunday  Times,"  4th  August,   1918. 


252  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

brought  in  a  united  people  at  any  earlier  stage, 
American  opinion  itself  is  divided.  But  to  an 
"outlander"  like  myself,  and  even  though  I  began 
my  work  in  the  country  when  the  last  German 
offensive  and  the  first  considerable  lists  of  Amer- 
ican casualties  were  rousing  the  States,  and  Prince 
Lichnowsky's  memorandum  was  dispelling  alt 
doubts  of  Germany's  guilt,  the  difficulties  which 
had  retarded  the  national  opinion  and  resolution 
were  still  very  apparent.  They  are  known  to  the 
world.  There  is  the  extraordinary  mixture  of 
races  in  the  American  nation  described  above. 
There  is  the  distance  especially  of  the  Middle  and 
the  Far  West  from  the  fields  of  war.  How 
slowly  instruction  travels  and  conviction  grows 
across  these  vast  spaces,  may  be  seen  from  what 
I  was  told  of  the  difference  between  the  apathy 
of  the  trans-Mississippi  farmers  to  the  first  two 
Liberty  Loans  and  the  zeal  with  which  they 
responded  to  the  Third.  There  were  the  old  and 
once  very  wise  traditions  of  the  national  duty  to 
hold  aloof  from  European  quarrels;  and  the 
patience  required  to  learn  that  this  war  is  one  not 
for  Europe  only  but  for  humanity.  And  there 
was  (to  a  less  extent)  the  natural  gratitude  of 
many  pure  Americans  to  German  learning  and 


EPILOGUE  253 

German  training.  But  obvious  as  these  factors 
are,  it  is  necessary  for  a  foreigner  to  revisit 
America  and  to  move  up  and  down  among  her 
people  In  order  to  realise  their  force  and  the  con- 
sequent reasonableness  of  the  American  delay. 
And  (as  I  have  said  In  the  first  of  the  addresses) 
the  delay  has  brought  our  Cause  this  moral  ad- 
vantage, that  when  the  American  decision  to  fight 
came  about  It  was  a  very  deliberate  decision,  and 
accepted  by  practically  the  whole  people  after  a 
thorough  experience  of  the  German  mind,  and 
only  when  through  two  and  a  half  years  they  had 
proved  the  futility  of  treating  with  that  mind  on 
any  other  footing  except  that  of  war.  The  de- 
layed decision  was  a  vindication  and  reinforce- 
ment of  our  own  original  and  necessarily  swifter 
conscience  of  the  justice  of  our  Cause. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  write  of  the  evidence  con- 
stantly before  our  eyes  that  the  Americans  are 
following  up  their  convictions  and  enthusiasm  for 
that  Cause,  by  a  strenuous  and  unselfish  organisa- 
tion of  their  manhood  and  mobilisation  of  their 
material  resources.  The  people  are  engrossed, 
the  land  is  loud,  with  the  preparations  for  war. 
The  results  already  spread  vastly — in  that  cease- 
Jess  stream  of  men  across  the  Atlantic,  in  the 


254  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

two  millions  now  in  France,  and  in  the  huge  con- 
structions behind  them  there  of  docks  and  quays, 
of  railways  and  roads,  of  stores  of  food  and  am- 
munition, of  camps,  hospitals  and  schools.  I  may 
speak  safely  now  of  the  great  convoy  with  which 
we  returned  to  Britain.  Eleven  ships  carried  over 
thirty-six  thousand  American  infantry,  the  staff  of 
a  Division,  and  a  host  of  military  nurses,  besides 
heavy  cargoes.  We  were  escorted  by  United 
States  warships  till  we  met  a  small  fleet  of  British 
destroyers  that  saw  us  safely  into  port — a  proof 
of  the  hearty,  vigilant  and  punctual  co-operation 
of  the  two  navies.  The  food  control  in  America 
since  the  war  began  has  been  well  organised  and 
loyally  obeyed.  Americans  have,  of  course,  not 
yet  felt  the  extremities  to  which  the  French  and 
British  have  been  reduced  by  four  years  of  war; 
and  on  so  great  a  continent  they  never  will.  But 
this  makes  all  the  more  conspicuous  their  recent 
gift  to  their  allies  of  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
six  million  bushels  of  wheat,  over  and  above  their 
usual  exports  and  saved  from  their  own  consump- 
tion between  January  and  June  last.  We  saw 
the  process  at  work.  Hotels,  restaurants,  dining- 
cars  all  loyally  followed  Mr.  Hoover's  request  to 
save  meat,  wheat,  and  other  foods.     The  volume 


EPILOGUE  255 

of  the  gift  has  been  swollen  by  rills  from  prac- 
tically every  home  in  the  United  States ;  and  it  is 
this  even  more  than  its  volume  which  renders 
the  gift  so  precious.  Of  the  shipbuilding  we  saw 
in  yards  old  and  new  along  both  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific  coasts,  and  even  in  creeks  far  up  the  coun- 
try where  the  ribs  of  wooden  vessels  rose  above 
the  primeval  trees  ;^  of  the  ubiquitous  munition 
works  and  works  of  every  other  article  of  war, 
and  of  the  almost  endless  processions  of  freight 
trains  working  eastward  I  cannot  now  write. 

I  can  only  say  that  it  has  been  a  privilege  and 
Inspiration  to  see  a  great  and  a  generous  people 
thus  roused  by  their  conscience  and  deliberate 
study  of  the  facts  to  an  unselfish  war  in  the  inter- 
ests of  justice  and  freedom  to  all  mankind. 

I  had  the  honour  of  being  received  by  President 
Woodrow  Wilson.  In  the  course  of  our  conver- 
sation he  spoke  chiefly  of  those  moral  aims  of  the 
Allies  of  which  he  has  proved  so  clear  and  im- 
pressive an  interpreter.  His  final  words  were: 
"Be  sure  to  tell  your  people,  that  when  the  time 
comes  for  settling  the  terms  of  peace,  we  must  con- 
tinue to  be  true  to  the  ideals  which  have  inspired 

*  So  one  morning  on  the  borders  of  Louisiana  and 
Texas. 


256  OUR  COMMON  CONSCIENCE 

our  warfare — that  each  of  the  Allied  nations 
must  preserve  through  those  negotiations  a  na- 
tional unselfishness  and  disinterestedness.  Other- 
wise we  cannot  face  the  young  men  whom  we  have 
taught  and  trained  and  sent  forth  to  fight  for 
these  high  principles." 


■Jf^i 


Date  Due 


APR  1 
JAN  4 


MAY  3 


.;.;li^I 


Wd^dW^m 


5  19S3 
-4988- 


0  1968 


lySfj 


Library  Bureau  Cat.  No.  1137 


